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A Time of Exile

“Hold your tongue, Tieryn Danry! I say we ride back straightaway.”
“Let Danry finish.” Much to everyone’s surprise—even his own, perhaps—Leomyr was the defender. “He knows war, my lord, in his heart and blood and bone.”
There was a moment’s silence; then Mainoic made a grudging nod and let Danry speak.
“He only wants us, my lords. He doesn’t want to harm one soul in that city and turn Abernaudd against him. He wants to break us and the rebellion, and then offer his ever so majestic pardons to everyone else in Eldidd, so there’ll never be a rebellion here again. If we go rushing back to Abernaudd, he’ll be waiting on ground of his choosing with well-rested men.”
The arguments broke out like a summer storm, thundering, violent, and over very fast.
“True enough, Falcon,” Mainoic said at last. “What shall we do, then? Find a good position and wait for him to come after us? Our men could starve before he decides to move.”
“I know that, Your Grace. I say we march for Aberwyn. Let Aeryc sit on his behind in ’Naudd and wait for us. By the time he moves, we’ll be entrenched in a walled town with fortifications that seal the harbor off from the countryside. We can send ships out for provisions if we need to, or use ships to get men in and out safely. Then we can try to rally the countryside.”
Everyone turned to look at Gatryc. He shrugged and turned both hands palm upward.
“Leomyr was right,” Aberwyn’s lord remarked. “The Falcon lives and breathes war. My lords, allow me to offer you the hospitality of my dun.”
There was laughter, but it was only a grim kind of mutter. Even so, as they dispersed to give orders and turn the line of march, there was still hope. The men and horses were fresh, and even if they rode by a long route to throw Aeryc off, Aberwyn was only some hundred miles away while the Deverry king was stuck holding Abernaudd. Unfortunately for the rebellion, Abernaudd, guarded only by some fifty aging or ill culls from the rebel army and a reluctant and whining citizen watch, surrendered that very afternoon.

When the town militia threw open the gates of Abernaudd, Aeryc suspected a trick, but a carefully chosen detachment occupied the city with no trouble. Leading the rest of the army, Aeryc rode through unmanned gates and down silent streets where the few townsfolk he saw were huddled behind upper windows. Finally, near the gwerbret’s dun, he saw one old woman standing openly on the street comer. As he started to pass by, she grabbed her rags of a skirt and dropped him a perfect curtsy. Aeryc threw up his hand and halted the march. While the army milled around and sorted itself out, he bowed gravely from the saddle to the wrinkled old crone.
“Good morrow. And what makes you curtsy to the king?”
“Simple manners, my liege. Whether or not everyone else in this cursed town’s forgotten their courtesy or not, and truly, so they must have, to shut a door in the face of a king. Always curtsy to a king, my mam told me, and so I do.”
“Indeed? And, what’s your name, pray tell?”
“Oh, they call me Daft Mab, and it’s true enough, my liege. Are you going to burn the place down? I do like a good fire, I do.”
“Well, you’ll have to watch your fires in a hearth, Mab. Tell anyone who asks you that the king says there’s mercy for all, as long as they took no hand in the actual plotting of the rebellion. I’ll put out a proclamation soon enough.”
“Then I’ll tell them first, my liege. You look like a good king, truly.” Daft Mab considered, her head tilted to one side, “Oh, that you do, and polite to your mother, no doubt.”
“I try my best to be. Good day, Mab.”
When Aeryc rode up to the dun, which stood on the highest of Abernaudd’s many hills, he found a squad of his men waiting at the gates. The place was deserted, they told him, stripped bare of every man, horse, and most of the food. Not even the servants were left behind, though they might be mingling with the townsfolk.
“I don’t care about the cursed servants,” Aeryc said, to the reporting captain, “Well and good, then. Mainoic’s wife must have gone elsewhere, which is fine with me. I can’t be bothered sorting out hostages at the moment.”
Aeryc turned his horse over to his page and went into the great hall with Gwenyn, the captain of his personal guard. Aeryc was honestly surprised at how small and shabby it was, not much better than the hall of a tieryn down in Deverry. The tapestries were old-fashioned, the furniture was worn, and there wasn’t room to seat more than two hundred men.
“Well, my liege,” Gwenyn remarked. “The only thing the false king is going to do in this dun is hang. It’s magnificent enough for that.”
One of the men did find a pair of fine maps, treasure enough since neither the king nor any of his captains had ever been in Eldidd before. Aeryc sat on the edge of the table of honor and spread them out himself. While he and his staff ate a hasty meal of cheese and bread, washed down with a forgotten barrel of Mainoic’s ale, they studied the long curve of the Eldidd coast, marked with all the villages and demesnes of the various noble lords. Far to the west stood Cannobaen, where his one loyal vassal was holed up like the badger of his device. Aeryc pointed to the spot with the tip of his dagger.
“One way or the other, we eventually want to sweep by the Maelwaedd’s dun,” Aeryc said. “I have every intention of rewarding him for his loyalty, so it’ll be best to let him join his men up with the army. Our spies say he has only ten or eleven riders, but it’s the honor of the thing that matters to a rustic lord like the Maelwaedd.”
“No doubt, my liege,” Gwenyn said. “Ye gods, there’s not a cursed lot out there on the western border, is there?”
“Forest and fog, or so I hear. I’m in no hurry to march to Cannobaen. There’s no real need. First we’ll wait here in the trap and see if our rebels take the bait.”
Just after sunset, however, a pair of scouts rode in with the news that the rebel army seemed to be swinging toward Aberwyn. Aeryc woke his staff and gave orders to have the men ready to march well before dawn.

Danry, of course, had sent out scouts of his own, and that night, when the rebel army halted, he made sure that guards ringed the camp round on a double watch as well. After a quick and futile conference with the demoralized king, Danry went back to his own fire and found his impatient son waiting up for him.
“Da, I don’t want to sit in Aberwyn all winter! Aren’t we going to get to fight?”
“Eventually. Once the countryside’s roused, and a relief army’s marching our way, we’ll sally from Aberwyn.”
Cunvelyn’s disappointment was almost comical.
“Waiting’s a part of war, lad. Whether you like it or not, you’re a real soldier already.”
At that point, the rebel army had forded the Aver Dilbrae some twenty miles upstream from Abernaudd and camped on its western banks. If they headed southwest on a reasonably direct line, they were only about forty-five miles from Aberwyn. Since even in good summer weather, twenty miles was a solid day’s march to an army of those days, and here in the short damp days of midwinter they were lucky to do twelve, Danry considered that they were safely out of the king’s reach. He quite simply had no way of knowing that the king’s crack cavalry, rigorously trained and drilled, riding the best horses with extra mounts at their disposal, backed by an elaborate supply system that was, ironically enough, one of Nevyn’s legacies to the kingship, could in emergencies cover twice that distance.
Yvmur himself unknowingly made the situation a bit worse on the morrow by insisting that the army swing a few miles out of its way in the direction of another holding, Dun Graebyr, to pick up the twenty men he’d left on fort guard. Since Aeryc would be marching after the main army, Yvmur reasoned, he wouldn’t be attacking the dun, and they might as well have the men and the fresh horses. Although Danry wanted to scream at the man that they had to make all possible speed, he was painfully aware that he was no cadvridoc, only a councillor of sorts, and very much on sufferance. So he held his tongue and let the army angle sharply west, heading for Dun Graebyr, instead of angling south, as Danry wanted, on the road to Aberwyn.
In the end, Yvmur’s twenty extra men made no difference, because Aeryc caught them on the road on the second day after the surrender of Abernaudd. Since the rebels had scouts riding out on the flanks, Danry wasn’t taken entirely by surprise. They had about an hour to find a good defensible position and arrange the army in it. A broad meadow eased into a low rise, just some twelve feet high, but enough to guard their backs, and on the top of the rise was a loose stand of scattered trees to protect the supply wagons and suchlike. And the king—Yvmur and the two gwerbrets agreed with Danry without one cross word or argument that the lad had better stay safely out of the way for this first, crucial battle. While they waited for Aeryc’s army, Danry collared Cunvelyn.
“Now listen, lad, it’s your first real scrap. You’re going to be one of the men protecting the king.”
“Hiding in the forest, you mean!”
Danry slapped him across the face, but he held his hand a bit, since he was only teaching manners.
“You do what I say.”
“I will, sir.”
“Good.” He allowed himself a smile. “Now come on, Bello, most men would be begging for a chance to ride next to the king. You’re being honored, you silly young cub, and trust me, there’ll be more than enough battles later on to satisfy you.”
Rubbing his face with one hand, Cunvelyn managed a smile at that. His father clapped him on the shoulder, then sent him on his way after the supply wagons and the rest of the king’s guard.
By the time Aeryc’s army came into sight, the sun was as high as it was going to get. When the plume of dust appeared, heading straight for them, horns blared up and down the waiting rebel line. In the clink and rustle of metal, men pulled javelins and readied shields. Danry arranged his men, with himself at their head, in the center of the lax crescent formed by the army. He offered one prayer to the gods for Cunvelyn’s safety; then the Deverry horns shrieked a challenge, and there was no time for prayer or thought. Aeryc’s army turned off the road, came free of a stand of trees, and paused about a quarter mile away to draw their javelins. There were about a thousand of them, Danry estimated, very fair odds indeed. Although his scouts had set the number higher, he put the discrepancy down to the fears and excitements of untried men. It was the only mistake he made in the whole campaign.
The Deverry army bunched into a loose wedge for the charge. The Eldidd line inched forward, gathering itself as the enemy walked their horses a few hesitant yards closer to get a little momentum. At last, when they were close enough for Danry to see the golden wyverns on their shields, their horns blew for the charge; the line surged; the wedge leapt forward and raced for the rebels. With a shout to his men, Danry flung his javelin and drew his sword on the smooth follow-through as the Deverry wedge flung up shields. A few men went down. Danry shrieked a battle cry and spurred his horse forward. Behind him his men plunged after, turning, as they’d been trained, to smash into the flank of the leading riders and scatter their force. Behind them the field exploded in shouting and the clash of weapons.
Danry faced off with one man, killed him, spun for another—then heard horns—a lot of horns—bellowing above the war cries and the shouting. The Deverry line ahead was wheeling back, almost as if to retreat. Riding hard, his captain, Odyl, fell in beside him.
“My lord! Look back!”
With Odyl there to guard his flank, Danry could turn his head for a look just as a plume of dust began to rise among the trees, and a new set of horns and shouts broke out. The rest of the Deverry army was battling up the other side of the rise. Doubtless they’d merely been trying to hit the rebel army from the rear, but all at once Danry realized that they were getting themselves a splendid prize indeed.
“The king!” he screamed. “Odyl!”
Screaming and cursing, they tried to turn their horses and rally the rest of their men to get them up the rise, but the Deverrians were all over them. Aeryc’s men fought well, cursed well; Danry had just time for that grudging thought before he found himself fighting for his life, mobbed by three of them. Odyl went down, stabbed in the back. Desperately Danry fought to stay mounted, parrying more than attacking, dodging his way free only to find himself in a new mob. His heart went cold as he realized that Aeryc’s men were deliberately going for the leaders, the noble-born and the captains, the better to crush the common-born. As silent as death itself he went on striking, slashing, dodging, working his horse back and back till at last they reached the rise. There what had been protection became a trap. He was so hard pressed that turning his horse and climbing the rise meant death. He could only fight on and hope for a chance to break out to the side.
The Eldidd horns started shrieking retreat. Everywhere Danry saw the gold wyvern coursing the field. Danry knocked one off his horse, killed another, drove forward, and by a stroke of sheer luck leapt past a pair of Deverry men so fast that they had no time to react. Just as he got through, he saw three Eldidd shields galloping to meet him, Leomyr and two of his men.
“Get out of here, man!” Leomyr screamed at him. “It’s lost!”
“My son! I’ve got to get to the trees!”
“There’s no hope of it. It aches my heart, but for god’s sake, ride! Here the bastards come!”
A squad of some twenty men were bearing straight for them. Only the thought that the king and Cunvelyn might by some miracle be alive and need him made Danry retreat, but he followed Leomyr as they galloped across the field and dashed for the safety of a distant woodland. Later Danry would realize that they’d been allowed to escape by men turned indifferent to their fate by some great victory; at the time he could only thank the gods that they made it out.
On the other side of the woods they found a scattered remnant of Eldidd riders. They herded them up like cattle and led them on, galloping until their horses could gallop no more, then letting the horses stumble to a walk. When Danry turned in the saddle and looked back, he saw no pursuit behind them. The only thing they could do was head for the nearest loyal dun and hope that the rest of the army would have the same idea. On the way, they gathered stragglers, until at last they brought sixty weary men to Lord Marddyr’s gates. In the ward they found a confusion of wounded, panting horses. Danry turned his contingent over to the frantic servants and led his men inside.
The hall was a sea of riders, sitting on the floor, lying in corners, nursing wounds or merely weeping from the defeat. Marddyr’s lady and her serving women rushed back and forth, tending the wounded. Up on the dais was a huddle of noble lords. When Danry and Leomyr joined them, Danry realized with a sinking heart that the king was not among them, nor Mainoic or Yvmur. There’s time yet, he thought, or maybe they went elsewhere. But Ladoic grabbed him by the arm and spit out the news.
“The king’s captured! Ah, ye gods, they took him prisoner like a common rider!”
Danry began to weep, shaking with the death of all his hopes and his honor, as the grim tale went on, and he wasn’t the only man in tears. One lord saw Mainoic fall, another saw Yvmur slain, a third had seen Cawaryn dragged out of his saddle. As they talked, a few other stragglers staggered into the great hall. At every new arrival, Danry looked up, praying it would be his son. It never was. As servants crept round, lighting candles and torches against the setting of the sun, the lords began arguing over what to do next. Every lord had left men behind on fort guard; if they could gather them, they could field a strength of close to four hundred. The question was how to go about it. Finally Gwerbret Gatryc, wounded though he was with a slashed right arm, rallied his strength enough to take command.
“We’ve got to get out of here, or we’ll be penned in a hopeless siege. Start kicking your men onto their horses. I know it’s bad, but we’ve got to ride west. We’ll have a better chance of hiding in wild country.”
The logic was irrefutable. While Danry was separating his men from the general mob, one of Yvmur s riders came up to him.
“My lord? I saw your son fall. He’s dead.”
Danry could only stare at him for a long, numb moment. The lad wasn’t much older than Cunvelyn himself.
“We’ll all be dead soon enough,” Danry said at last. “I’ll see him in the Otherlands.”
That night, about two hundred men out of the original thousand took the cold ride west. The horses were too weary to do much more than walk, and no one pushed them, because they had little hope of finding more if they foundered them. They rode until they could ride no more and made a camp of sorts in the wild forest around midnight. Around a sputtering campfire of damp twigs and sticks, the remnants of Eldidd nobility gathered and tried to plan.
“We’ve got to find shelter away from the coast,” Gatryc said. “We’ll stretch his cursed supply lines thin that way. He won’t dare follow us all the way into our territory. Let him take Aberwyn! We’ll take it back again.”
“True-spoken,” Ladoic put in. “And Danry here knows the wild forest around Cannobaen.”
Danry realized that everyone was turning to stare at him. In his numb grief he couldn’t understand why.
“So I do. And that’s our best hope, right enough.”
They all nodded. With a sigh, Gatryc cradled his bandaged arm and stared at the ground. While the others talked, Danry began thinking about his son, remembering the little lad who used to toddle to him with outstretched arms and lisp a few words. When someone caught his arm, he looked up dazed.
“Did you hear that?” Leomyr said to him.
“What? You’ll forgive me, my lords. Cunvelyn fell in that battle.”
There was a quick wince of sympathy from every man there. Leomyr let him go.
“We were wondering how soon the Deverrian will hang the king,” Leomyr said. “I’m wagering he won’t wait.”
“Oh, I agree with you, for what my opinion’s worth.”
“And the king has no heirs.” Gatryc’s voice was faint. “If we want to keep the throne in Eldidd, we’d best have a man to sit on it, hadn’t we?”
Like a hot dagger through wax the words cut through Danry’s exhaustion.
“It’s a noble thing to honor a friend,” Gatryc said. “But Pertyc Maelwaedd holds the future of Eldidd in his Badger’s claws. Do you think you can persuade him to the right way of thinking?”
When Danry hesitated, Gatryc gave him a thin smile.
“I doubt if you can,” the gwerbret went on. “Danry, believe me, it aches my heart to say what I have to say. But we have to have his lad. Adraegyn’s the king of Eldidd the moment Cawaryn dies. I’ve no doubt that the Deverrian knows it as well as we do. We’re sending a warband ahead of us, the men in the best shape on the best horses to go fetch him from his father’s dun. Leomyr will captain them, because that way he can stop at Dun Gwerbyn and pick up his fresh men and suchlike. The rest of us will follow and fight a rearguard action. Keep the Deverrian too busy to make a quick strike west. And you’re staying at my side. We need your battle wisdom. Besides, I have no desire to make you watch the events at Cannobaen.”
Although it was nicely said, Danry knew that he was being put under arrest.
“My thanks, Your Grace. Though he’s betrayed us, Pertyc was my friend once. I don’t want to see him die.”
This was just unexpected enough to put everyone off guard. As they stared at him, Danry summoned a bitter smile.
“Well, by the black ass of the Lord of Hell, what do you think? That I can see the death of all my hopes, of my king, and of my own son, and still love the traitor who brought this all down upon me?”
“I think I’ve misjudged you, my friend,” Gatryc said. “Well and good, then. Here, my lords, there’s nothing more to be said. Get what sleep you can.”
As he strode off, Danry was aware of Leomyr watching him, but he had no strength to worry about the man. It’s all lost anyway, Danry thought, all we can do is die with a little bit of honor. Around three campfires huddled the thirty-seven men he had left out of his warband of a hundred and twenty. Danry spoke a few words to them, then rolled himself up in his cloak. He fell asleep on the icy ground to dream of his son and Pertyc, the two things he loved most in the world, one already lost, the other doomed.
Danry woke long before the rest of the camp, when the moon was setting among the icy stars. He got up, moving stiffly, and looked round for the guard that he knew Gatryc had posted over him. In the dim light, he could see the young rider huddled on the ground and snoring. Danry crept past without waking the lad. In a clearing the horses were tethered; the guard there was asleep, too. Danry found his own chestnut gelding, still bridled, and led him away through the forest. Once they were clear of the camp, he set the horse’s bit and mounted bareback. He was going to have a long, hard ride to Cannobaen, but he was determined to warn Pertyc and die at his side. In his muddled state of mind, it all seemed perfectly just: he was leaving his men and horses with his allies to make up for this betrayal.
Since the horse was tired, Danry let it walk along the west-running road while he tried to think. He could lie his way across Eldidd, he supposed, claiming fresh horses and food from his erstwhile allies’ duns on the pretext of bringing them the terrible news. The road here ran through trees, which soon would thicken into a remnant of the wild forest. He would cut straight across country, he decided, to the dun of Lord Coryn, one of Mainoic’s vassals. Then he heard the sound behind him: men and horses, coming fast. He clung to his horse’s neck and kicked it as hard as he could, but the horse could only manage a jog. When he looked back he could see a squad gaining on him.
At first Danry thought it was Deverry men, closer than any of had expected, but as they approached, he recognized Leomyr in the moonlight. It was a pathetically ridiculous race of exhausted men on exhausted horses, trotting after one another with barely the strength to yell. Sick in his heart of the farce, Danry turned his horse and rode back to meet them. Leomyr’s smirk made him draw his sword. The six riders ringed him round, jostling uneasily for position in the dim light.
“I thought so,” Leomyr said. “You’re a good liar, Danry, but not quite good enough. You’re never reaching the Badger’s hole.”
Danry shouted and kicked his horse straight for him, but a rider intervened. With two quick cuts he killed the man, swung round him, got one good blow on someone else—he couldn’t see who—before he felt the fire, slicing open his back as the five remaining riders mobbed him from flank and rear. The pain came again, burning through his shoulder to the bone, then stabbing from the side. The dim night road was swimming and dancing around him, spinning, spinning, spinning as horses reared and men yelled. The trees were swooping and falling. Danry hit the road hard, tasting dust and blood as he choked. The road went dark. He saw a light burning in the dark, but it was a light that never shone on land or sea. In it he saw his lad, reaching out to him.

The news was such a shock that for a long while Pertyc felt as muddled and sick as someone suffering from a bad fever. He was lingering over his breakfast that morning, dreading the thought of archery practice in the rain, when Nevyn came striding into the hall. The old man pulled off his wet cloak and tossed it to Adraegyn.
“They’re coming, my lord. Leomyr and eighty men, but the rebellion is over, whether the idiots will admit it or not.”
When Pertyc tried to speak, no words came. Nevyn went on, rattling off the news: the king had marched, caught the rebels by surprise, and torn them to pieces. A few desperate men were left to regroup out in the forest and fight to the death.
“And this morning, King Aeryc hanged young Cawaryn,” Nevyn finished up. “Ye gods, this all took me completely off guard! I was only idly looking for news, and found a boiling kettle spilling soup into the fire. Here I thought we had another month before the king even arrived in Eldidd.”
“So did I,” Pertyc stammered out. “How close is Leomyr?”
“A day’s ride.”
Pertyc could only shake his head in bewilderment. Halaberiel, who’d apparently seen Nevyn’s arrival, came hurrying up to the table of honor.
“And what are we going to do about the women?” the banadar said. “It sounds like there’s not a dun in Eldidd where they’d be safe.”
Pertyc nodded, glancing around. Aderyn was standing in the doorway and watching Nevyn with his blank owlish stare.
“We can’t send them into the forest,” Nevyn said. “Well, I guess they’ll just have to stay here, and we’ll simply have to hold the siege until the king can lift it.”
Pertyc found his tongue at last.
“Easy to say, not so easy to do. If the archers hold them off, they’ll probably try to fire the dun. You know, ride as close as they can and sling torches over the wall. We’ve got mounds of firewood stacked all everywhere, you know, for the beacon.”
“I sometimes marvel at the gods.” Halaberiel was grinning to take the sting out of his words. “Here they gave you Round-ears heads that are as big as ours, but they forgot to put any brains in them. You’ve got two dweomermen on your side.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
Halaberiel rolled his eyes heavenward to beg the gods to bear witness to the aforementioned lack of brains.
“He means that if Leomyr tries to fire the dun,” Nevyn broke in. “It won’t burn.”
“Now here, are you telling me you can command the fire?”
Nevyn glanced around, pointed to a wisp of straw on the hearth, and snapped his fingers. The straw burst into flames. When he snapped his fingers again, it went quite stone-cold out. Pertyc felt like fainting dead away.
“I thought I’d shown you that trick. Now, my lord, I suggest we prepare for the siege.”
At last Pertyc rediscovered how to talk.
“One last question. Have you seen Danry in your scrying?”
“Well, I have, my lord. It aches my heart to tell you this, but Danry’s dead, and so is his elder son.”
Pertyc wept, tossing his head to scatter the tears away.
“Ah, ye gods, I knew it would happen when he chose this rotten road, but it hurts, my lord. Was it in battle?”
“For his son, it was. But Danry . . . well, Leomyr and six men murdered him on the road. I think that Danry was trying to get free and warn you the rebels were coming, but of course, I can’t know for certain.”
“It would be like him, to think of me.” He heard his voice shake and swallowed hard, then turned to face the great hall. “Men, listen! When the rebels start riding for the gates, Lord Leomyr of Dun Gwerbyn is mine. Do you hear me? No man is to send an arrow his way until I’ve had my chance at him. Now let’s get to work. We’ve got to warn the villagers and farmers, and we need to start distributing the arrows to our stations on the walls.”
The day passed in a confusion too frantic to leave Pertyc time to mourn, but late that evening he walked alone in the dark ward and thought of Danry. He would have given his right arm for a chance to kiss him farewell. His wife had always accused him of loving Danry as much as he loved her; it was true enough, he supposed, although he’d never loved Danry more, either, not that she’d believed him. Wrapped in the loss of both of them, he climbed up the hundred and fifty steps of the Cannobaen light, because the tower view could often soothe him. On the platform up top, the beacon keeper crouched beside the fire pit and fed split chunks of log into the leaping lames. At the far edge Halaberiel was leaning on the protective stone wall and surveying the dark swell of the ocean, spattered with silver drops of moonlight. Pertyc leaned next to him, and watched the waves sliding in, touched with ghostly foam, so far below.
“Well, Perro, looks like you’re ready for your uninvited guests.”
“As ready as ever I can be. There’s still time for you and your men to head home, you know.”
“There’s not enough time in a hundred years for that. I was thinking about your wedding, and . . . ”
“You know, Hal, I don’t really want to remember just how happy I was then.”
“Fair enough. We should probably be thinking about our enemies instead. Nevyn says they’re still a good bit away, camped by the road to the north.”
“Well, I take it the old man knows what he’s talking about.”
“He’s keeping a strict eye on them.” Halaberiel turned slightly, and in the leaping light from the beacon fire behind them Pertyc could see that he was close to laughing. “Nevyn says to me, ‘That bunch of bastards took me by surprise once, and I’ll be twice cursed if they do it again!’ The old man’s a marvel, isn’t he?”
“You could say that twice and only be half true.”
Long before dawn, Pertyc got his men up and positioned them by the glow of the Cannobaen light. The line of archers sat on the catwalks, hidden behind grain sacks stuffed with wet beach sand for want of a proper rampart. When he gave the signal, they would stand up, ready to attack, and hopefully surprise the enemy good and proper. Pertyc took the position directly over the gates, but although he kept his bow out of sight, he leaned on the wall as if he were waiting to parley. As they waited, no one spoke, not even the elves. Slowly to the east the sky lightened; slowly the beacon fire paled and died away. Up on the tower, the lightkeeper gave a shout.
“Dust on the road, my lord. It’s coming fast.”
In a moment or two, Pertyc heard horses trotting along, a lot of horses. Leomyr, insolently unhelmed, riding easy in his saddle, led his warband of eighty men off the coast road and toward the dun. When they stopped, some hundred yards away and just out of bowshot, Leomyr had the gall to wave, all friendly like, before he rode a little closer and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Open your gates. Don’t be a fool. Badger! This is your chance to be king of Eldidd.”
“Eldidd already has a king. His name’s Aeryc.”
With a shrug, Leomyr turned in his saddle and began shouting orders to his men. By chance, most like, they kept out of range as part of the war band peeled off and ringed the dun round while the rest bunched behind Leomyr on the path up to the gates. Toward the rear of the line, men dismounted and hurried to a pair ofpack mules. They brought down a ram—a rough-cut tree trunk tipped with iron, which Leomyr must have fetched from Dun Gwerbyn on his way. Obviously he’d never even considered that Pertyc would surrender. Eight men, dismounted but still in full armor, caught the handles of the ram and stood ready.
“One last chance,” Leomyr called to Pertyc. “Surrender?”
“You can shove that ram where you’ll enjoy it.”
Leomyr shrugged, settled his pot helm, then turned to wave his men forward. Slowly the line advanced, the armed riders escorting the ram with Leomyr off to one side shouting orders. The men moved cautiously, slowly, since they and Leomyr expected that at any moment the gates would burst open for a sally out. Pertyc smiled, judging distance. As the riders came closer, they drew their swords, but they kept looking up at the walls, as if they were puzzled.
“Pertyc, curse you,” Leomyr called out. “Won’t you even parley?”
“Here’s my parley.”
Pertyc raised his bow, aimed, and loosed, all in one smooth motion. The arrow sang as it flew, striking Leomyr in the shoulder. Pertyc grabbed another, nocked it, loosed again, and saw Leomyr reel in the saddle as the arrow bit through his mail and sank into his chest. With a shout the other archers rose, nocked, and loosed in a slippery whisper of arrows. Pertyc heard Halaberiel laugh aloud as his shot knocked another man clean off his mount.
“Try to spare the horses!” the banadar yelled in Deverrian, then howled out the same order in Elvish.
In the boiling panic that erupted out on the field, Leomyr tumbled over his horse’s neck to the ground. Horses screamed and reared; men shrieked and fell and rushed this way and that. The men carrying the ram threw it to the ground and raced for the road, but only two of them made it. Pertyc was only aware of the dance of it: loose, pull an arrow, nock and loose again, leaning effortlessly, picking a target, bracing himself as the last of the enemy warband charged the gates, simply because they could think of nothing else to do. As the wave swept forward, Pertyc had the satisfaction of seeing Leomyr’s body trampled by his own men. Halaberiel yelled in Elvish; his men swung round to aim directly into the charge. The arrows flew down; men and horses dropped and whinnied and swore and bled. Finally Pertyc could stand this slaughter of the helpless no longer. He lowered his bow and began screaming at the enemy.
“Retreat, you stupid bastards! You can’t win! Retreat!”
And simply because he was noble-born and they were hysterical, they followed his orders and wheeled round to flee. With shouts and curses Halaberiel called off the archers and let them go, flogging a last bit of speed out of their sweating horses as they galloped for the road. Swearing, Pertyc realized that it was over. Nothing moved on the field but wounded horses, struggling to rise, then falling back.
“Open the gates, lads!” Pertyc yelled out. “Let’s see what we can do for the poor bastards they’ve left behind.”
His men cheered, laughing, slapping each other on the back. Pertyc fought to keep from weeping. He’d never expected his idea to work so well, and as he looked at the carnage below him, he suddenly understood why Eldidd men had ignored the existence of longbows for so many hundreds of years. With one last convulsive sob, he slung his bow over his back and climbed down the ladder to the cheering of his men.
Pertyc set some of the men to carrying what few wounded there were into the dun, then ordered others to start burying the dead and putting badly wounded horses out of their misery. He himself found Leomyr’s mangled body and dragged it free of a tangle of dead animals. He laid Leomyr out flat, crossed his arms over his chest, then rose, staring down at the corpse.
“I hope you freeze in the hells tonight.”
He kicked Leomyr hard in the side of the head, then went back inside the dun. Adraegyn came running and grabbed his hand.
“Can I come out now? This isn’t fair, Da, shutting me up like one of the women!”
“Tell me somewhat, Draego. Do you want to be king of Eldidd?”
“I don’t. I’d only be a usurper, not a king. Isn’t that what you said, Da? You’re always right, you know. Oh, this is splendid. Glae said you killed them all. Did you truly?”
“Most. Come along. There’s a lesson my da taught me that it’s time to teach you.”
Pertyc led him to the area just beyond the gates where the warband was piling up the bodies of the dead. Pertyc held Adraegyn’s hand tight and dragged him over to the heaped and contorted corpses. When Adraegyn tried to twist free and run, Pertyc grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him round to face the sight. The lad burst out weeping.
“This is what glory means, Draego,” Pertyc said. “You’ve got to see it. Look at them.”
Adraegyn was sobbing so hard that he could barely stand. Pertyc picked him up in his arms, carried him over to Leomyr, then set the weeping lad down.
“Do you remember Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, Draego?” Pertyc said.
His face streaming with tears, Adraegyn nodded.
“I killed him,” Pertyc went on. “I stood on our wall and hit him twice and knocked him off his horse. You know why? Because he killed Danry. That’s what having a blood-sworn friend means, lad. Look at him. Someday you’ll be Lord Cannobaen, and you’ll have a friend you love the way I loved Danry.”
Slowly, a sniffle at a time, Adraegyn stopped crying.
“What happened to his face?” the boy whispered.
“The horses kicked his body a lot.”
Adraegyn turned away, pulled free of Pertyc’s hand, and began to vomit. When he was finished, Pertyc knelt down beside him, pulled a handful of grass, and wiped the lad’s mouth.
“Do you still think it’s splendid?”
Adraegyn shook his head in a mute no.
“Well and good, then. Once, when I was your age, your gran did to me what I just did to you. It’s part of what makes us Maelwaedds.”
Carrying shovels, servants trotted past. Adraegyn turned his face away from the sight.
“You can sleep in my bed with me tonight,” Pertyc said. “Doubtless you’ll have bad dreams. I did.”
That evening, Pertyc shut his gates again, posted guards, and called the rest of his men into the great hall. He ordered mead poured all round, then had the servants ceremoniously chop up the captured ram and feed it into the fire. The men cheered, calling out to him and laughing, pledging him with their goblets as the best captain they’d ever seen. Pertyc merely smiled and called back that they deserved all the glory. On the morrow he would make a grim speech, but for now he wanted them to taste their victory. The elves were another matter. Pertyc called them together out of the hearing of the rest of the men.
“You can leave tomorrow at dawn if you’d like, with as much booty as your horses can carry. There’s no need for you to see the defeat. The rest of the rebels are on their way here as fast as they can ride, or so Nevyn tells me, and they’ve picked up some reinforcements.”
“Well, Perro,” Halaberiel said. “That’s honorable of you and all, but we don’t ride into a race only to ride out again at the first taste of dust.”
“Are you certain? Look, you know enough about bowcraft to know that sixteen archers can’t repel an army of three hundred.”
“Not forever. But there’ll only be a hundred and fifty left by the time we’re done with them, if we have the least bit of luck.”
“Bound to have luck,” Calonderiel broke in. “The Wise One of the West is here, and so’s the Wise One of the East. Ye gods, if we’ve got so much evil luck coming our way that those two can’t turn it aside, then we’ll only fall off our horses on the journey home and break our necks.”

Late that night, once the wounded men were tended and asleep, Nevyn climbed up to the top of the tower. Since the beacon keeper was used to his eccentric ways by then, he merely said a pleasant “Good evening” and returned to chopping some of the continual firewood for the light. Nevyn sat down comfortably with his back to the guard wall and studied the fire, a splendid, large luxury for scrying. In a few minutes, a portion of the Cannobaen blaze turned into a tiny campfire, and round it paced Gatryc and Ladoic, talking in hushed voices. Nevyn focused his will and brought himself closer to the vision, until he could see Gatryc’s grayish face. Every time the gwerbret moved his arm, he winced and bit his lower lip. The wounds were infected, most like, Nevyn thought with a professional detachment. Nearby two of the men who’d ridden with Leomyr sat on the ground, slumped and exhausted. So the lords knew that Leomyr was dead and that if they wanted Adraegyn they’d have to come get him themselves.
Nevyn widened the vision until it seemed that he swooped over the countryside from a great height and found that the rebels were less than a day’s ride, perhaps twelve miles, away. What counted more was the king’s location. That search took a little longer, but eventually Nevyn spotted the royal army some fifty miles away, camped on the road just outside the western gate of Aberwyn. A flash of gloom cost him the vision. From what he understood of Halaberiel’s talk, their small squad of archers would be unable to turn back the newly augmented rebel army before they managed to ram open the gates. The rebels were warned, now, that archers with elven longbows held the walls, and they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come charging right in as Leomyr had. Well, if the king won’t arrive in time, Nevyn told himself, we’ll just have to slow the rebels up, then. The question is, how? He leaned back against the wall and considered the play of flames while he weighed possibilities.
All at once the wind gusted, and the lightkeeper swore and coughed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Cursed smoke!” he muttered.
Just in time Nevyn kept himself from laughing, because, of course, it wasn’t the poor man’s stinging eyes that were amusing him. He got up and bade the lightkeeper good night, wondering what the man would think if he knew his small misfortune might have just saved the entire dun. For this work, though, he would need privacy. He hunted up Aderyn, who took him to his chamber at the top of the broch.
“I’m not sure I can really pull this off,” Nevyn said after he’d explained his plan. “According to the Bardek scrolls that I’ve been studying, it’s theoretically possible, but theory’s one thing and practice another.”
“Well, if you can’t, we’ll try to think of somewhat else. Are you ready to go into trance? I’ve got the door barred.”
“I am, at that. If I start flopping around, hold me down, will you? I do that sometimes in deep trance.”
As soon as Nevyn assumed the body of light, he left the dun, hovered high above it for a moment to gather strength, then flew off to the rebel camp. By the time he reached it, most of the men were already asleep, but Gwerbret Gatryc was awake and sitting by his council fire with a handful of the noble-born and what few captains remained. What infuriated Nevyn was that they knew their cause was already lost. They were planning on making Aeryc pay high for his peace and naught more, just so they could die with what they called honor, no matter what the cost to the farmers and villagers of Eldidd.
After a few moments of rest, Nevyn floated close to the fire, which welled and purled with golden currents of pure etheric energy and thick blackish smoke, because the lords were burning damp and moldy wood culled from the forest floor. Nevyn prepared his mind in the way his theoretical scrolls recommended, called on the god-names they suggested for good measure, then slowly sucked up the energy, drew the fine particles of smoke to himself, and bound them round him by force of will. With one sharp thrust, he called on the Lords of Fire for aid. The smoke particles rushed and clung, caught in the stresses of his body of light the way iron filings arrange themselves around a lodestone. Gatryc yelped in terror and scrambled to his feet, his rotting arm dangling useless at his side. When the other lords all leapt up, too, cursing and staring, Nevyn could assume that yes, he was quite visible as a ghost-creature of smoke. Since he had no throat to speak with, he sent thoughts to their minds.
“Beware,” Nevyn intoned. “Beware! Beware, O impious men! The gods have lost patience with your cause. Beware, lest you feast with me tomorrow in the Otherlands.”
Nevyn could see their auras draw in sharply, a panic reaction as the fine forces rushed back to the body. In one convulsive step the pack of men fell back. Nevyn noticed that behind them, a couple of the riders had woken and sat up to stare.
“Who are you?” Gatryc stammered.
“I am the spirit of Aenycyr, last king of Eldidd. Be you mindful of my tragic tale?”
“We are.”
“For this little while, the Lord of Hell has allowed me to walk upon the earth, that I may warn you men who love Eldidd so greatly.” He hesitated, trying to remember more of the old saga that he was quoting. “Though your cause is just, your Wyrd is harsh. Not even the dead know when the time will come for Eldidd to rise again. Beware!”
The strain of keeping the smoke-built body was growing too great. Nevyn could feel his improvised form swirling and wavering over the fire. He decided that specifically warning them off Pertyc might be too blatant for an omen and allowed most of the form to drift back into smoke, but he did keep the face intact for a few moments longer.
“Even as I speak the Lord of Hell recalls me. Throw this folly aside, men of Eldidd, or on the morrow night you’ll dine with me in the Otherlands.”
As the last bit of smoke swirled away, Nevyn sent out an exhalation of pure panic. Just as the scrolls predicted, the men thought they heard an actual shriek, a grating, blood-freezing howl like a banshee’s, as he raced through the camp in his body of light, thrusting that thought into the minds of the sleeping riders as well as those of the lords. The men threw off their blankets, stumbled to their feet, cursing, swearing, asking each other what that ungodly wail might have been.
The Wildfolk heard it, too. Radiating distress, which the more sensitive of the men dimly felt as their own, they materialized into physical form but clustered round Nevyn’s body of light, which they of course could see, in an enormous pack. All at once, he got another inspired idea.
“See those men?” Nevyn thought to them. “They’re very bad men. They want to kill Aderyn and Halaberiel.”
If they could have screamed in rage, they would have as they swept off through the camp. They pinched and kicked and bit, hammering the men, grabbing the horses. In a yelling, neighing, swatting, kicking chaos, the camp erupted. At this point, Nevyn realized that he was dangerously exhausted. He rushed back along the silver cord to the dun and slipped into his body. As he woke to normal consciousness, he found that he was lying all in a heap in the curve of the wall. Panting for breath, Aderyn had his arms around him.
“By the gods!” Aderyn snarled. “If I’d known how strong you are in trance, I’d’ve got Maer up here to help hold you down.”
“You have my sincerely humble apologies. Are you all right?”
“You gave me a clip on the jaw, but otherwise I am. How did it go?”
“Taking the smoke into the etheric mold worked splendidly. Humph, I certainly wish I’d known this trick during the civil wars! As for the results, well, let’s take a look in the fire and see, shall we?”
But when they scried out the camp, they saw only trampled blankets, scattered gear, broken tether ropes, and Gwerbret Gatryc, sitting alone at the fire and cradling his inflamed arm while he stared into the face of despair. If it weren’t for the death he would have brought to the people of Eldidd, Nevyn might have found it in his heart to pity him.

In effect, the rebellion ended that night. Most of the common-born riders disappeared into the countryside, slinking back to their families and taking their old places on their father’s farm or in his shop to wait and see just how lenient Aeryc was going to be. To protect their families, the remaining rebel lords and their last few loyal men surrendered to Aeryc, who pardoned the riders and hanged the lords. Gatryc committed suicide, but his infected wounds would have killed him in a few days anyway. While Aeryc rode at a leisurely pace to Cannobaen, all Eldidd waited and trembled. With their fathers slain, boys were the only lords the province had, but everyone knew that Aeryc would attaint the rebel duns and redistribute them to loyal men from Pyrdon and Deverry itself.
Pertyc wasn’t in the least surprised when Halaberiel announced that he and his men would be leaving before the king arrived. There was no need, as the banadar remarked, to turn his highness’s whole view of the world upside down over a petty little rebellion like this.
“But I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming, my friend,” Pertyc said. “And it gladdens my heart that none of your men were killed over this.”
“Mine, too.” But Halaberiel spoke absently. “And I’ll be seeing the rivers of home soon enough.”
“You must be glad of it.”
“I suppose.”
Pertyc hesitated on the edge of comment.
“I’m growing old.” Halaberiel said it for him. “I think that somewhere deep in my heart I was hoping for a glorious death in battle, clean and sudden. And now it doesn’t seem likely, does it? I see naught but peace ahead for my last few years. Ah well, what the gods pour, men must swallow, eh?”
“Just so. I understand.”
“I thought you might. Well, if I see your wife, shall I give her any message from you?”
“That the children are well. That I wish she still loved me.”
“She never stopped loving you, Perro. She just couldn’t bear to live with you. It was the Round-ear ways, not you.”
“Oh.” Pertyc considered this revelation for a long moment. “Well, then, tell her that if she wants, she can come and take Beclya away with her. And as for me, say that I never stopped loving her, either.”

Surrounded by an honor guard of a mere four hundred men, King Aeryc arrived at Cannobaen on a day that threatened rain but never actually delivered it. Although Pertyc suspected that Nevyn had something to do with the accommodating weather, he never had the nerve to ask the old man. Even though the king had left most of the army back in Aberwyn, there still, of course, was no room inside Dun Cannobaen’s walls for those that he had brought; they made a camp in the meadow where the villagers grazed cattle in the summer while Aeryc, Gwenyn, and an escort of fifty rode on to meet Lord Pertyc at his gates. For the occasion Pertyc insisted that every member of his warband, all eleven of them, take a bath and put on clean clothes; he followed his own order, too, and went over protocol with Nevyn, who seemed to know an amazing amount about dealing with kings.
When Aeryc arrived, dismounting some feet away and striding up to the gates, Pertyc was ready. He and Adraegyn both bowed as low as they could manage; then they knelt, Pertyc on one knee, the boy on both.
“My liege, I’m honored beyond dreaming to welcome you to my humble dun.”
“It is small, isn’t it?” Aeryc looked around with a suppressed smile. “It won’t do. Lord Pertyc.”
“My apologies, then, from the bottom of my heart.”
“No apologies needed. But I suggest that we repair as soon as possible to your other dun.”
“My liege? I have no other dun.”
Indeed you do, Gwerbret Aberwyn.”
Pertyc looked up speechless to find the king grinning.
“Pertyc, my friend, thanks to this rebellion there are exactly two men left on the Council of Electors for southern Eldidd: you and me. If I nominate you to head the gwerbretrhyn, and you second the motion, well, then, who’s to say us nay?”
”My liege, my thanks, but I’m not worthy.”
“Horseshit. Rise, Aberwyn, and stand me to some of your mead. His highness is as thirsty as a salt herring.”
When, much later that day, Pertyc consulted with Nevyn, the old man told him that the king was invoking an ancient law. Any member of the Council of Electors who backed a rebellion against a lawful king did by holy charter forfeit his seat upon the council. Although Pertyc was frankly terrified by his sudden elevation, he knew in his heart that he’d regret it the rest of his life if he turned it down. Besides, he realized soon enough that as gwerbret he had considerable say in the disposition of the rebellion’s aftermath. Since the king was minded to mercy—he was farsighted enough to be more interested in preventing future rebellions than in punishing the current one—he granted many of the petitions to mercy Pertyc was minded to make. Not all, of course—the families of the rebel gwerbrets would be stripped of lands and title both, as would Yvmur’s clan and Cawaryn’s clans, by birth and marriage both. His young widow, barely a wife, was allowed to live, but only as a priestess, a virtual prisoner in her temple.
But Danry’s widow and his younger son stayed in possession of Cernmeton, as did Ladoic’s of Siddclog and so on among almost all the minor lords. Pertyc was finally able to repay Ganedd, too, when the young merchant came to him to beg mercy for his father. Dun Gwerbyn, however, was a different matter. When Aeryc wished to dispose it upon a loyal though land-poor clan of western Deverry, the Red Lion, Pertyc had not the slightest objection to make.
And such are the twists of the human mind that from then on, the Red Lion clan felt nothing but friendship toward the Maelwaedds, while the Bears of Cernmeton, worn down by gratitude, came to hate them.

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A Time of Exile

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IN THE GREAT dun of Elrydd, looming over the town on a high hill, Danry of Cernmeton was drinking with its lord, Tieryn Yvmur. By the honor hearth they sat round a beautifully carved table with the young pretender to the throne, Cawaryn. Although he was only sixteen, he would impress the men who would have to serve him; with raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes, every inch an Eldidd man in looks, he walked with an easy grace, stood arrogantly, and had all the mannerisms of a man born to command. A hard-bitten fox of a man in his thirties, Yvmur sported long dark mustaches, and his pale blue eyes glanced at his elder sister’s son with a genuine fondness, as if inviting Danry to share it.
“I’m truly grateful that you’d ride to take our hospitality.” Cawaryn spoke carefully in what sounded like a prepared speech. “I value your skill on the field highly, Your Grace.”
“My thanks, Your Highness.”
Yvmur and Cawaryn shared a brief smile at the honorific.
“But I’m hoping there’ll be no need to demonstrate that skill before spring, when the Deverry king arrives,” the pretender went on. “I’d hate to see us wasting our strength here in Eldidd. It would be a pity to have factions before we even have a throne.”
“Just so,” Danry said. “Pertyc Maelwaedd has a good saying about that: even jackals bring down the kill before they squabble over the meat.”
At the mention of Pertyc’s name, Yvmur stiffened ever so slightly. Danry decided that it was time to end the fencing match.
“You know, with my own ears, I’ve heard Pertyc belittle and disclaim his right to the Eldidd throne. He’s quite aware that he descends from the bastard of a common-born woman.”
“Pertyc’s always had a wit as sharp as a razor,” Yvmur put in, before the king-to-be could comment. “He’s a man I honor highly.”
“So do I,” Danry said, “for all he’s an eccentric sort. It’s rare that you meet a man with no desire to rule.”
Cawaryn merely listened, his head tilted to one side like a clever dog.
“You know our Perro better than any man alive,” Yvmur said.
“I do, and I’ve never met a man who fits his clan’s device better. Pertyc can be as stubborn as a badger, all right, once he takes an idea into his head. He wants to stay in Cannobaen, and he’ll hang on with all his claws.”
Yvmur nodded, thinking, but Cawaryn moved restlessly in his chair.
“That’s all very well,” Cawaryn snapped. “But why won’t he pledge to the true king?”
Yvmur turned smoothly and shot a glance of warning.
“Oh well, I mean, er,” Cawaryn stammered. “Doubtless he will once the war’s over. I mean, he doesn’t even have many men to bring to the army, so maybe he just doesn’t want to fight or suchlike.”
Danry smiled, pretending to take no insult.
After the meal that night, Yvmur insisted on taking Danry out to the stables to see a particularly fine horse, and he carried the candle lantern himself instead of bringing a servant. They went down to the stall where a handsome gray stallion was drowsing over his manger. Danry made the obligatory compliments and waited.
“Cawaryn’s not old enough to understand a man’s desire for neutrality,” Yvmur said at last. “But I am.”
“I understand it, too. I wondered if anyone else did.”
“A few. A very few. By the by, it’s time to celebrate Cawaryn’s wedding. Once the two thin lines are joined, they’ll look thicker.”
“Just so. My lady is looking forward to coming to Abernaudd for the festivities.”
“It gladdens my heart to hear you plan to attend.”
“And why wouldn’t I? I intend to show every bit of support for our liege that I can.”
Yvmur lowered the lantern and looked Danry full in the face.
“There are some who assumed you’d support your friend over the king. I begin to think they’re wrong.”
“Dead wrong. My sword and my men are marching behind Cawaryn.”
“Well and good, then, and my thanks.” Yvmur considered briefly. “Is it a wrong thing for me to ask why?”
“Not in the least. I want to save Pertyc’s life and Pertyc’s son. Any man who considers Adraegyn a better claimant than Cawaryn will have me for an enemy—for Pertyc’s sake and for your sake, too.”
Yvmur nodded slowly, considering the lantern in his hand.
“Then a friendly word. You’d better keep your eyes on Leomyr of Dun Gwerbyn. That’s where I’ve been keeping mine.”

Out behind Dun Cannobaen in a wild meadow, where scruffy grass grew tall, bent continually by the sea wind, Halaberiel made an archery range for Pertyc’s warband with targets out of painted wood—to begin with; later they would stuff old shirts with straw to look like men. Maer found archery practice the most boring thing he’d ever done in his life, and the rest of the warband grumbled with him. All morning, every day, wind, rain, or shine, Halaberiel lined his new recruits up at the marks, subjected them to intense sarcasm, and made them draw and loose arrow after arrow. Even with the leather guards and gloves, fingers blistered and wrists bruised. Halaberiel handed out elven herbs for soaking hands and told them to be back at their marks promptly on the morrow.
Maer, of course, was the only man in the warband who saw the congregation that assembled to watch them. The Wildfolk came in swarms, lining either side of the practice ground like onlookers at a contest, crawling all over the targets, standing behind the men and mimicking everything they did, ruffling the fletching on the arrows and occasionally even pinching the archers themselves, just to see if they could spoil their aim. The first time Maer saw an arrow skewer one of the Wildfolk he nearly shouted aloud—he could feel his face turning pale—but the little creature merely disappeared, then popped back into manifestation a few feet away, no worse for the experience. Every now and then he saw the blue sprite, standing nearby and watching him sadly. The reproach in her eyes was so human that he almost felt guilty, as if he’d actually betrayed her.
The rigorous training left Maer little time for his new wife, which to his surprise annoyed him. He had to admit that being married was turning out to have advantages. It was nice to have Glaenara whenever he wanted, and in the warm comfort of their own bed, not the hard ground. At dinner, when they sat together at the servants’ table and shared a trencher, Glaenara would smile and listen with a flattering intensity to his account of his day until she had to go help old Maudda in the women’s hall. Since Maer would go drink with the rest of the warband at that point, he found himself thinking that he’d lost very little by marrying compared with what he’d gained.
One night, when Maer had a little less ale than usual, he found himself thinking about his new wife’s sweet body and left the table early. When he went to their bedchamber, he found her sitting up on the edge of the bed and mending a rip in his spare shirt by candlelight. Maer sat down on the floor and watched her sew, frowning a little at her work in the uncertain light.
“My apologies for that,” Maer said. “I lost one of those cursed arrows in a hedge, you see, and our cat-eyed friends made me fetch it out again. I guess the fletcher can straighten them if they’re not too bad.”
“I’d rather mend for you than anyone else.”
She looked up with a smile that Maer found sweetly troubling. He wondered how long it would take her to get the blasted shirt finished so they could go to bed.
“Maer? Are you happy with me?”
“Happy?” Maer was taken utterly off guard. “Well, now, I don’t truly think much about things like being happy. I didn’t think you did, either.”
“I never have before.” Glaenara was concentrating on knotting her thread. “But I’m starting to.”
“Well, I like being part of the warband a lot more than I liked being a silver dagger, even with the archery practice.” He put his arms around her and kissed her. “Come lie down, and I’ll tell you some more.”
“Gladly. When are you going to give me a baby, Maer?”
“When the Goddess wants me to give you one, I’ll wager, and not before, but come lie down, and we’ll give her a chance at it.”
On the morrow morning, after archery practice, he lingered behind to walk back to the dun with Pertyc.
“My lord, somewhat I wanted to ask you. You’re a married man and all, so you’d understand. I’ve been thinking that we might get besieged. There’s your daughter, and now my woman, and then the old nurse and the serving lasses. What’s going to happen to them?”
“I’m sending them away long before the trouble starts. I wondered if you’d been worrying about that.”
“I have. Glae might be a widow soon enough, but I couldn’t bear it, watching her starve with us.”
“You’re a good lad in your way, Maer. It’s too bad your Wyrd was harsh enough to bring you to Cannobaen. But don’t trouble your heart about the women. I’m going to ask Nevyn for help.”
Maer was much relieved, willing to trust blindly in his lordship and the sorcerer. As they walked through the gates, they saw a fine horse, laden with beautiful red leather and silver trappings, standing outside the doors. Pertyc swore under his breath.
“Here, Maer,” he said. “Grab some of the lads. Run out and take down those targets and hide them. Hide the bows, too. I’ll pray it’s not too late to distract this bastard.”
While Pertyc ran for the hall, Maer ran for the barracks. He rounded up six men and followed his orders, stowing the targets and the bows up in the hayloft. When they returned to the great hall, Maer saw a young man kneeling by Pertyc’s chair and talking gravely with him. Maer found Glaenara over by the servants’ hearth and caught her arm.
“Who’s that, do you know?”
“One of Tieryn Yvmur’s riders. He came with a message for our lord about the royal wedding.”
Right then Maer discovered the value of having a wife in the confidence of the most knowing gossip in all Cannobaen.
“It’s ever so exciting,” Glaenara went on. “This lad who’s going to be married is the one the rebels say is the king of Eldidd. So if our lordship goes, he’s saying he’s a rebel, too, but if he doesn’t go, it’ll be an insult. If he goes to the wedding but won’t declare for the king, they’ll kill him right then and there. Maudda says she’s ever so worried. After all, our lord was like a son to her.”
“What’s our Badger going to do?”
“Stay home. He told her that he’s already insulted everyone once, so why not twice?” Glaenara sighed, troubled herself. “I wish they’d just be content with the king we’ve got. He doesn’t even come to Eldidd and bother the pack of them.”
“True-spoken. Pity they don’t see it your way.”
On the morrow, the messenger rode out again, and archery practice resumed. But from then on, they practiced far away from the dun in the woods, where no casual visitor would see the telltale row of targets.

Since Cawaryn’s father was dead, the marriage took place in the gwerbret’s palace in Abernaudd. A gray-haired, blustery sort of fellow, Gwerbret Mainoic was related to Cawaryn by blood several times over and devoted to his cause. As a particular mark of favor, Danry and his family were invited to shelter in the main broch of the many-towered dun itself for the long round of entertainments—hunting in Mainoic’s park, bardic performances in the great hall, displays by the war galleys down in the harbor. Late one afternoon, Yvmur suggested that they go for a stroll out in the gardens behind the broch complex. It was a drizzly sort of day, with the flower beds turned under for the winter and the trees dripping gray drops from bare branches. Out in the middle of the browning lawn stood a small fountain, where the dragon of Aberwyn and the hippogriff of Abernaudd disported themselves under a spray of clear water. Yvmur studied the statues for a moment.
“You’ll notice how they’ve made the dragon a bit smaller than the hippogriff. There’s a fountain in Aberwyn to match this. Ever seen it?”
“I have. Odd: there the dragon is a noticeable bit larger.”
“Just so. By the by, Leomyr’s arrived. He came by way of Aberwyn.”
They let their eyes meet for a moment.
“Chilly out here,” Danry said. “Shall we go in? I truly should pay my respects to Leomyr.”
Leomyr, Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, had been given a pair of splendid chambers up on the top floor of the main tower. When Danry found him, he was eating an apple, holding it in his hand like a peasant and taking neat bites with his prominent front teeth.
“I was going to seek you out.” Leomyr paused to toss the core into the fire blazing in the hearth. “It gladdens my heart to see you, my friend.”
“My thanks, and the same to you. A tardy arrival’s better than none at all.”
Leomyr took another apple, then offered the silver bowl to Danry.
“None for me, my thanks. I’ve just eaten. The gwerbret sets a good table. There should be enough on it for any man.”
His eyes faintly mocking, Leomyr bit into the second apple.
“You’re turning into quite a courtier,” Leomyr said with his mouth full. “I never knew you could fence so well.”
“Practice always sharpens a man’s hand.”
“Did you learn from Pertyc? He seems cursed coy these days, as bad as a young maid.”
“There’s nothing coy about Perro. If he tells you a thing, he means it from his very heart.”
Leomyr took another bite and considered him.
“Most maids like a brooch as a courting gift,” Leomyr said at last. “And usually, the bigger the better, especially when it’s a ring brooch.”
“For the shoulder of a plaid cloak? Pertyc’s never cared for jewelry.”
“Well, of course, what Pertyc does is no concern of mine, as long as he doesn’t fight for the Deverrian.”
“Of course.”
“You’ll notice I’m here for the wedding. I brought our liege a splendid gift, too.”
“Well and good, then. I hope he and the new queen treasure it for a long time in good health.”
By a mutual, if unspoken agreement they sat down in facing chairs. Danry rested his hands on his thighs and waited.
“I’m mostly surprised at you, my friend,” Leomyr said. “I know you love the Maelwaedd like a brother.”
“I do, which is why I’m willing to let him do what he wants, not what I want him to do.”
“Umph, well. You know, I have only thirty men, not exactly enough to make a king.”
“And, how many men do they have in Aberwyn?”
“A hundred and ten, which is no more than you do, Falcon, as you cursed well know. But I wonder if you know just how much the success of this rebellion turns on your loyalty.”
“I can count up the men available for an army as well as anyone else.”
“It’s beyond that. I’ve seen you fight, you know. You look like one of the gods themselves out there when the steel starts flashing. Men will follow you anywhere.”
Danry turned away in sincere embarrassment. When he spoke again, Leomyr sounded, oddly enough, amused.
“I hope the day doesn’t come when both you and our stubborn Badger regret this decision. I’ve never trusted Yvmur for a minute.”
“Neither has Mainoic.” Danry turned back. “I’ve no doubt things can work out to your satisfaction—if you care to spend a bit of time in Abernaudd.”
Leomyr looked at him sharply, then smiled. Danry smiled in return. One king’s enough for the jackels to fight over, he thought, as long as the blood smells fresh enough to attract them.
Later that afternoon, a page summoned Danry to the great hall to attend upon Cawaryn and his uncle. Most of the lords sheltered in the dun were there, seated at long tables in order of rank with Cawaryn at the head of the gwerbret’s own table, even though he was only a tieryn’s nephew, a gesture lost on no one. When Leomyr came into the hall and made a bow to the lad that was as close to a kneel as circumstances would allow, Danry was satisfied with the results of their conversation. Gwerbret Mainoic rose and cleared his throat for a speech.
“I called you together, my lords, to witness somewhat that might gladden your hearts. The merchant guilds of Abernaudd and Aberwyn have banded together to bring our Cawaryn a gift for his marriage.”
The guilds never wasted their coin on gifts for minor lords, only for gwerbrets—and kings. Slowly, gravely, in measured step, four pairs of merchants came in, carrying, on a sort of litter improvised from a plank, an enormous red velvet cushion, and on the cushion, a golden cauldron, all graved and worked in bands of interlace and spirals, that would hold a good twenty skins of mead. Danry caught his breath in a low whistle—the thing was worth a fortune! At his uncle’s prompting, Cawaryn rose to receive them just as they set their burden down.
“My humble thanks for this splendid gift,” Cawaryn said, with a sideways glance at his uncle. “To whom do I owe this honor?”
“To all the assembled trade guilds of Eldidd, Your Grace.” The merchant who stepped forward was old Wersyn of Cannobaen. Well, well, well, Danry thought, and does Perro know about this? When Wersyn began a long and somewhat tedious speech, which skirted without saying that everyone knew Cawaryn for the new king, the assembled lords allowed themselves small smiles and sidelong glances at one another. If even the common folk stood behind the rebellion, the omens were shaping up favorably indeed.
As Danry was returning to his chamber to fetch his lady down for dinner, he saw another merchant, standing in a corridor and talking idly to a servant lass. At the sight of Danry, the merchant bowed, smiled, and hurried quickly away, a little too quickly perhaps. Danry stopped and caught the lass by the arm.
“And who was that?”
The lass blushed scarlet as she dropped him a curtsy. “Oh, his name is Gurcyn, and him a married man and old enough to know better, too, Your Grace, than to bother a lass like me.”
“I see. Well, get on about your work, then.”
Late that night, once the feasting was over, Danry retired to his chamber. Since he was Pertyc’s foster brother, raised by Maelwaedds in the eccentric Maelwaedd way, he could read and write. That night he was glad of it, too, thanking Pertyc’s father in his heart for making him independent of another lord’s scribes. He wrote Pertyc a long letter, telling his friend all the doings round the new king, but stressing in several different ways that he was to beware of Leomyr of Dun Gwerbyn. Early in the morning, when the sun was just rising, he went to the barracks complex, roused his captain, and gave the letter to his most trusted man to take to Cannobaen. He even walked down to the main gates of the dun with the rider and saw him on his way, but as he walked back, Leomyr met him.
“Sending a letter off?”
“Instructions for my steward at home. You’ve got sharp eyes for another man’s affairs.”
Leomyr shrugged and bowed. Danry had no doubt that Leomyr believed him as much as he believed Leomyr.

“Pertyc, listen,” Nevyn said. “You’ve asked me to help, and I’ve promised I would, but there’s blasted little I can do for you if you’re not honest with me. How soon are the rebels planning to declare themselves?”
Pertyc hesitated, visibly torn. They were up in his cluttered chamber, Pertyc slouched in a chair, Nevyn standing behind the lectern and resting his hands on the cover of Prince Mael’s book.
“I know you have your friends to consider,” Nevyn said.
“Well, one friend. I’d be willing to die for his sake, but I’m not about to let the women and children die, too.”
“Decent of you. How can I advise you when I don’t know what’s causing the trouble? Suppose you were ill, and you refused to tell me where it hurt. How could I prescribe the right medicinals?”
Pertyc hesitated, staring into empty air.
“Well, the trouble won’t come till spring, most like.” The lord spoke slowly at first, then with a rush of words. “Most of the rebels are rallying around one claimant, Cawaryn of Elrydd, but there are those who’d start a second faction because they don’t trust the men behind Cawaryn. This faction wanted to put me forward as a claimant, but I refused. Naught’s been said outright, mind, but I’ll wager we can both guess what they’re thinking. Kill the Maelwaedd, and we can take his son for a candidate.”
“Of all the stupid . . . ! Ye gods, but I should have known! That’s Deverry men for you, so busy fighting the battles among themselves that their enemies march in and win the wars. I see you have Mael’s old copy of the Annals of the Dawntime here. Have you read the tales of Gwersingetoric and the great Gwindec?”
“About how their own allies betrayed them, and so the cursed Rhwmanes drove King Bran and our ancestors to the Western Isles? No doubt this rebellion is as doomed as the one Gwindec led. Ye gods, my poor Danry! I—” He caught himself, wincing at his slip.
“So. Tieryn Cernmeton is the sworn friend, is he? Does he love you enough to send you warnings?”
“He does, and he has, because he’s doing what he can to bring the second faction over to Cawaryn so they’ll leave me alone. He told me they’re installing the new king as soon as they can. He has great hopes that everyone will support the lad once the priests have worked their ritual and all. I keep having doubts, myself.”
“Wise of you. Very well; I know enough to get on with. I’ll stop putting hot irons to your honor. For a while, anyway.”
That evening, Nevyn enlisted Aderyn’s help to guard his body while he went scrying in the body of light—a dangerous business, but he had no choice; since he’d never seen any of these men in the flesh before, he couldn’t simply scry them out through a fire or other such focus. They went into his bedchamber, which was pleasantly warm from the small charcoal stove in the corner. Nevyn lay flat on his back on the hard straw mattress while Aderyn sat cross-legged on the floor nearby. The little room was silent, dark except for the faint reddish glow from the coals. At this time of day, there was little chance that one of the villagers would come knocking, but Aderyn was there to fend them off if they did.
“Where will you go?” Aderyn said.
“Aberwyn for starters.”
Nevyn folded his arms across his chest, shut his eyes, and concentrated on his breathing. Quickly his body of light came, a simple man shape, built of the blue light, bound to him by a silver cord. He transferred over, hearing a rushy click as his consciousness took root, and opened his astral eyes. When he looked at Aderyn, he saw his friend’s body only dimly, like a wick in a candle flame, obscured by the blaze of his gold-colored aura.
Slowly Nevyn let himself drift up to the ceiling, then brought his will to bear on a thought of the coast road. Abruptly he was outside, hovering in the blue etheric light above the cliffs. Across the beach, the ocean was a silver and blue turmoil of elemental force, surging and boiling in vast currents, swarming with Wildfolk and spirits of all types. Although the sand itself, and the stone and dirt cliff faces, appeared black and dead, they were dotted here and there with the reddish auras of the clumps of weed and grass caught in cracks and crannies. The meadows at the clifftop glowed a dull orange, streaked by the dead road. As Nevyn rose higher, the Wildfolk clustered round him, some in the form of winks and flashes of refracted light; others, as pulses of glow, bright-colored as jewels. When he glanced over his etheric equivalent of a shoulder, he saw the silver cord stretching behind him and vanishing into mist.
With the Wildfolk swarming after, Nevyn rushed in long leaps of thought over the sleeping countryside until he came to Aberwyn. Far below him lay the town, a haphazard scattering of round dead shapes—the houses—lit by the occasional patch of reddish vegetable aura. Here and there some human or animal aura wandered through the dark streets like a mobile candle flame. Wreathed and misted in a veil of elemental force, the dangerous river ran like a streak of cold fire down the middle. Nevyn drifted over the city wall, but he was careful to avoid the river’s surge as he flew to the gwerbret’s dun.
Since he’d only been inside this dun once, and that nearly seventy years ago, he was lost at first until a small garden caught his attention. In the midst of the bright auras of well-tended plants stood a fountain in the shape of a dragon and a hippogriff, illuminated by the etheric glow of the water playing over them. He focused down until it seemed that he hovered only a few inches off the grass. Nearby was the jutting round wall of the main tower. Candlelight and firelight, forming pale reflections in the overall etheric glow, flickered out of the windows in such profusion that Nevyn could assume the great hall lay inside. He could also pick up a welter of ancient emotions: blood-lust, rage, the exhilaration of war and the stink of treachery, all lingering as faint, nearly unreadable traces in the blue light.
He walked right through the wall and found himself standing, or rather floating, on the dais at the honor end of the great hall. Gwerbret Gatryc was dining with his lady and an honored guest, a lord whom Nevyn didn’t recognize, a brown-haired fellow with prominent front teeth. The currents of feeling emanating from them were as tangled and sharp as a hedge of thorns, but one thing was clear: although they hated each other, they needed each other. They spoke only of trivial things for a few moments; then by mutual agreement left the table and went upstairs, calling for a page to follow them with mead and goblets.
Nevyn floated right along after them to a small chamber hung with tapestries, as dull and dead as painted parchment to the astral sight. Gatryc and his guest sat in carved chairs by a small fire, took the mead from the page, and sent the boy away. In this plane, the silver goblets, bathed in the bluish aura of the moon-metal, seemed as alive as the hands which held them. Carefully Nevyn focused his consciousness down one degree, until the chamber barely glowed with the etheric light and he could, with great effort, discern their thoughts.
“That’s all very well for now,” the guest was saying. “But how will you feel when Mainoic is controlling the throne?”
“That will be the time to make our move. Listen, Leomyr, a prize like this is worth waiting for.”
“True-spoken, Your Grace. But if we don’t advance the Maelwaedd claim now, men might have grave doubts when we do. And why did you swear to Cawaryn, they’ll say, if you never believed him a king?”
Gatryc considered, rolling his goblet between the palms of his hands.
“True-spoken. It’s a vexed situation, truly. We don’t have enough men behind us to make Adraegyn king by force. That’s why Danry was so important.”
“I know. But maybe we should have the lad now, for safekeeping, shall we say?”
“If we move on Pertyc Maelwaedd, we might as well refuse to swear to Cawaryn and be done with it. Everyone will know why we’re doing it.”
“I see naught wrong with crushing the only king’s man in our territory before the war comes. He’s an enemy at our flank, for all his supposed neutrality.”
“Perhaps.” Gatryc had a swallow of mead. “But with ten men or whatever it is he’s got, no one’s going to believe he’s a dangerous threat to the rebellion. And then there’s Danry. And his hundred and twenty men. And his allies.”
Leomyr considered.
“Well, Your Grace,” Leomyr said at last, “you’re exactly right about one thing: it’s too soon to move, one way or another. I only want to keep these questions alive in your mind. When it comes time for the new king to be proclaimed, we’ll have to sniff around and see what we can pick up. I think a few more lords may join us, once they see Yvmur all puffed up and prancing round the king.”
Nevyn had heard enough. He thought himself outside, flew over the dun walls, and headed home. On the morrow, he left Aderyn at the cottage and rode out to the archery ground, where he found Lord Pertyc practicing with his men.
“News for you, my lord,” Nevyn said. “Let’s walk a bit away, shall we?”
Pertyc followed him into the trees, where the fog hung in clammy gray festoons from the branches.
“Tell me somewhat, my lord. What do you know of an Eldidd peer named Leomyr?”
“Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn? Why do you ask?”
“Do you think him a friend that needs protecting? I’ll swear to you that he’s the worst enemy you have.”
Pertyc went a little pale, staring at him like a child who fears a beating.
“How do you know that?”
“Ways of my own. Do you honor him?”
“Not in the least. Danry warned me about him, you see. I’m just cursed surprised you know, too.”
“And did Danry tell you that Leomyr’s as close as two cows in a chilly field with the gwerbret of Aberwyn?”
“He only hinted about it. He didn’t know for sure.”
“I do know. Listen, if either of those two ride your way, or if they send you messages, don’t believe a word they say. And send Maer down to the village to tell me straightaway, will you?”
Over the next week Nevyn spent many a long and dangerous night traveling through the etheric until he knew the names and images of the men he needed to watch. From then on, he could scry more safely in the fire. He saw Leomyr busy himself with his demesne and his family, as if factions were the farthest thing from his mind despite the string of messengers coming and going between him, his allies, and Gwerbret Aberwyn. He overheard Gatryc exchange weaseling words with men loyal to Cawaryn. He saw Cawaryn himself and pitied the lad, pushed by his ambitious uncle into danger. Even more to the point, he saw Yvmur consulting with priests of Bel, pondering the calendar and the omens as they discussed the most favorable day to proclaim the new king, that crucial day which would mark not only the beginning of Cawaryn’s reign but of open rebellion.
Hatred, however, is a very poor reason to start a war, for the simple reason that it makes a man blind to his enemy’s good qualities. The Eldidd lords were so intent on thinking King Aeryc a dishonorable usurper that they forgot he was no fool. For years he’d seen trouble coming in that distant province, and he had spies there, paid in good solid coin to send him what news there was to know. Even as Yvmur and the priests chose a night for pronouncing Cawaryn king, one of those spies was receiving his pay, up in Dun Deverry, for some very interesting news.

Although a fire of massive logs burned in the hearth, it was cold at the window, an exhalation of chill damp from the stone walls and an icy breath from the glass panes. Outside the royal palace in Dun Deverry, the first snow lay scattered on dead brown grass. The king was restless, pacing idly back and forth from window to hearth. A handsome man, with striking green eyes, Aeryc stood over six feet tall, but he looked even taller thanks to his mane of stiff pale hair, bleached with lime and combed straight back in the Dawntime fashion. Since he was on his feet, Councillor Melyr was forced to stand, too, but the old man kept close to the fire. His lean face was drawn with worry—reasonably enough, Aeryc thought, since it was a dangerous point that they were discussing.
“We’re simply sick of waiting,” Aeryc said. “If the king is going to tolerate rebellion, then the king deserves rebellion.”
“No doubt, my liege, but does the king truly think he should take the field himself?”
“We have yet to make up our mind on this point.”
Out of pity for the councillor’s age, Aeryc sat down. With a grateful sigh, Melyr sank into a chair opposite.
“But if we ride to Eldidd, then we must ride soon,” Aeryc went on. “Hence our haste.”
“Just so, my liege. The roads will be bad soon.”
“Just that.” Aeryc considered, too troubled to keep up the proper formalities. “Cursed if I’ll let this pack of Eldidd dogs enthrone their usurper without any trouble. They’ll all be in Abernaudd with their warbands, then, anyway.”
“If this information you’ve received is accurate.”
“Why should Gurcyn lie? He’s been loyal to me—or to my coin, more like—for years. He gathered news from all over the province, to say naught of what he saw with his own eyes. The cursed gall of those whoreson merchants! Celebrating this piss-poor excuse of a lad’s wedding with a royal cauldron.”
When in sheer rage Aeryc got up from his chair, creaking at the joints, Melyr rose to join him.
“But, my liege, will a spy’s word be sufficient proof of treason in the eyes of the rest of the kingdom? Some of the Eldidd lords have individual alliances in the western parts of Deverry. A king whom men secretly call unjust is a king with many troubles on his hands.”
“True-spoken. From the point of view of war, it would be better to fall on them straightaway and wipe them out one at a time. But from the point of view of rulership, you’re right. It’s better to wait. But I see naught wrong with being close enough to march as soon as this impious farce of a ceremony is done with. Cerrmor’s never snowbound. I intend to take an army down while the roads are still clear. Then we can take ship for Eldidd when the time comes.”
“A brilliant stroke, my liege. There remains the question of whether the king himself will ride with his men. It seems unnecessary to me. I have every faith that your captains honor you enough to fight as bravely for your sake as they would with you at their head.”
“Of course. So what? I’m going, and that’s that. I want to grind their faces in the mire myself. The gall of this piss-proud whoreson excuse for a nobility! Didn’t they think I’d be keeping an eye on them? I—” Aeryc stopped in mid-tirade and grinned.
“My liege?”
“Somewhat just occurred to me. Since they don’t seem to think in terms of spies, I’ll wager they don’t have any of their own. How unfair of me, to keep all the spies to myself! I think I’d best send them one with some special information, all nicely brewed—like a purgative.”

It was about a month later when Yvmur showed up at Danry’s gates for a visit. All that day, they both kept up the fiction that Yvmur was paying a mere social visit to satisfy the tieryn’s natural curiosity about the preparations for the kingship rite. Late that evening, though, when Danry’s family had retired to their chambers and the warband was back in the barracks, they lingered at the table of honor in the great hall and drank a last goblet of mead by the dying fire.
“I’ve had no word at all about Leomyr’s doings,” Danry said. “Have you?”
“None, which worries me. It’s been a long time since he rode to Aberwyn last, but I doubt me if he’s been thinking only of his own affairs. I’ve sent him a message, just a friendly sort of thing, wondering if we’re to have the honor of his taking part in the ceremonies. There’s always room for another honored equerry or escort in affairs like this if he does agree.”
“Good. Let me know how he answers.”
On the morrow, when the pale sun dragged itself up late, it glittered on frost, a white rime thick on fallen leaves and dying grass alike. With a pack of dogs and a band of beaters, Danry took his guest hunting, but just as their little procession reached the edge of a leafless woodland, a rider came galloping after. It was a man from the dun, yelling Lord Danry’s name over and over.
“Your Grace,” the man panted out. “Urgent news. Your lady sent me to fetch you. A messenger at the keep.”
With a wave of his hand, Danry turned the hunt around and galloped for home. As they rode, he felt a foreboding, as icy as the morning, clutching at his very heart, an omen that was more than justified by the message from Mainoic.
“It’s truly urgent, Your Grace,” the carrier told him. “I beg you, fetch your scribe straightaway.”
Instead, Danry broke the seal and pulled out the roll of parchment himself. As he read, he could feel the blood draining from his face. The merchant Gurcyn had come rushing back from one last trading trip with horrible news. The king had men in Cerrmor—worse yet, the king himself was in Cerrmor, and everyone said that he was riding for the Eldidd border with his entire army behind him before the rebels could declare Cawaryn king. Mainoic was begging every man in Eldidd to collect his warband and muster in Aberwyn, where they would declare the lad and march to meet the invader.
“Ah, ye gods,” Danry said. “Well, your nephew won’t have the splendid ceremonies we’d planned, my friend.”
“As long as he’s king, the Lord of Hell can take the ceremony. So—the cursed Deverrian thinks he can beat us out like stags from a wood, does he? We’ll be fighting on our ground, not his, and we’ll give him the same fight of it now as we would later.”
Danry nodded in agreement, but he knew, just as Yvmur doubtless knew, that the words were bluster. They’d held no councils of war, planned no supply lines, done no work on their fortifications. Here at the edge of winter’s famine Aeryc could depend on the surplus of a rich kingdom while they would be extorting provisions from a reluctant populace.
“I’d best leave straightaway,” Yvmur said.
“Of course. We’ve all got our preparations to make. I’ll see you in Aberwyn as soon as ever I can.”
All that day and on into the night Danry worked side by side with his chamberlain and captain to ready his warband and procure supplies. He slept for a few fitful hours, then rose long before the tardy dawn to finish. Just as the sun was breaking over the horizon he ran upstairs for the last time to say farewell to his wife. Ylanna threw herself into his arms and wept.
“Here, here, my love,” Danry said. “You’ll see me again soon enough. The gods will fight on the side of a just cause and a true king.”
Although her pale face was wet with tears, she looked up and forced a smile.
“So they will. Then fight to a true victory, my love, and bring our lad home safe to me.”
“I’ll swear it. Someday you’ll have the favor of a true Eldidd queen.”
Out in the ward their elder son, Cunvelyn, paced back and forth while he waited, grinning as if his face would split from it. At fifteen, the lad was riding to battle for the first time.
“And who are we riding for, lad?” Danry said.
“The true king. The one true king of Eldidd.”
The warband broke out cheering: to the king, the king! Danry was laughing as he mounted his horse. As they trotted out of the gates, the sun was just beginning to rise, a new day dawning for Eldidd.
By riding hard they reached Aberwyn in three days, and as they rode, they picked up men and allies until Danry, by a mutual consent among the lords, led an army of close to four hundred into the city. They found the gwerbret’s dun a seething confusion of men and horses. Supply carts clogged the main ward, horses stood tethered in walled gardens, bedrolls lay scattered on the floor of the great hall, battle gear overflowed the tables while warriors stood to drink and eat, servants ran endlessly back and forth with food and messages and spare bits of armor. Danry shoved his way through and found a council of war in progress in the gwerbret’s private chambers at the top of the main broch. Ordinary lords hovered outside while tieryns crammed the half-round room; Mainoic and Gatryc stood at either side of the pretender and talked urgently, often at the same time. Danry sought out Leomyr and found him leaning into the curve of the wall out of the way. Danry was tired and exasperated enough to dispense with fencing.
“There’s no time now for your cursed factions. Let the Badger stay in his den.”
“I know it as well as you do, but it might be too late for the Maelwaedd anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen. Just listen to the talk, Falcon.”
Danry left him and worked through the crowd, stopping to say a word here and there to a friend. Everyone was full of the same question: how did Aeryc come to know so much about their plans?
“He even knew about that blasted cauldron the guilds gave the king,” Ladoic of Siddclog said. “Treachery, lads.”
The men around nodded grimly, staring at Danry in a decidedly unpleasant way. Danry was struck breathless, wondering if they doubted him, but then Ladoic went on.
“Neutral, was he? This Badger friend of yours, I mean. I think Pertyc has blinded you good and proper, Danry. We should have ridden to Cannobaen and wiped him out the day he refused to join us.”
Most of the room was turning to listen. When Danry glanced around, he saw cold eyes, grim eyes, eyes filled with a bitter hatred.
“Pertyc swore a vow to me,” Danry snarled.
“Oh, no doubt,” Ladoic said. “No one’s blaming you, my friend. Vows have been broken before, haven’t they? Someone sent the pus-boil Deverrian all the news he needed.”
Nods—grim smiles—Danry felt as if he were being cut with a thousand knives.
“By the hells, Pertyc would rather die than lie to me. It must have been someone else!”
“No time for that now, anyway!” Yvmur came striding down the room, pushing men aside to reach Danry. “It doesn’t matter who slit the wineskin—what counts is stitching the leak. Later we can deal with whoever this traitor might be.”
More nods—a few mutters—a sullen defeated agreement. For the rest of the day, Danry kept to himself. Although he refused to believe Pertyc capable of treachery, the wondering ate at him like poison.
Instead of the feasts and entertainments, instead of a hall draped with blue and gold and filled with lovely women, instead of the long processions and the temples, Cawaryn was declared king in Gwerbret Gatryc’s ward on a dark cold morning. Torches flared, sending their scarlet light over the grim faces of the men, lords to the front, riders to the rear, packed close together, armed for war and ready to ride. Up on an improvised dais, the lad stood straight, flanked by the gwerbrets and his uncle, while the priests of Bel draped the blue, gold, and silver plaid of Eldidd round his shoulders. Cawaryn knelt while the priests lifted up their hands and prayed over him. Danry listened grimly, glad of every prayer they had on their side. At last, the head priest took from its coffer the massive ring brooch of Eldidd, kept hidden for over fifty years in the vaults of his temple. It was eight inches across, solid gold, chased and worked on both sides with delicate knotwork fit for a king, and bearing in the middle the locked dragon and hippogriff twined round an enormous sapphire. As he held it high in both bands, the crowd gasped. Slowly, with due ceremony, the old priest pinned it to the shoulder of the cloak.
“Rise, Cawaryn,” the priest called out, “king of all Eldidd in her hour of need.”
As the lad stood, the men cheered and howled. Wave after wave of shrieking, hysterical laughter echoed off the walls as the sun rose on the war.

The army rode out that very morning. Besides the easy coast road, there were two mountain passes into Eldidd from Deverry. The one to the north was high, doubtless choked with snow. The southern pass was just barely open to a determined army. Although scouts had been sent out long before, everyone was assuming that the Deverry forces would come along the coast from Cerrmor.
Two days’ forced march brought an Eldidd army of nearly a thousand men close to the mountain border. On that first march, there was hope. They had plenty of men, who would fight not merely at orders but because they believed in the fight. They’d been warned of Aeryc’s advance in time to take up a good position of their choosing for the first confrontation. They had, for a couple of weeks at least, plenty of food and fodder to keep the army strong. Scouts rode out and returned from the southern pass, bringing the news that, as yet, there was no sign of the Deverrians. Late on the second night, after a weary army had made camp, Yvmur summoned Danry to a small council of war round the fire in front of the king’s tents. While the older men talked, Cawaryn paced, his brooch bright at his shoulder.
“If we catch Aeryc on the sea road,” Yvmur said, “we’ve got him in a cursed bad spot. We can pin him against the cliffs where there’s no room to maneuver.”
“And shove him over the edge, may the gods allow,” Gatryc said, grinning. “Have those scouts come in?”
“Not the last lot.” The king finally spoke. “We have sent men across the border, you see, in hopes that they can tell us how far away the enemy lies.”
The men nodded gravely, trying to ignore the king’s frequent glances to his uncle for reassurance.
“My liege?” Danry said. “And what of the scouts from the north?”
“No word,” Yvmur put in. “We’ve sent men after them, but I’ll wager that Aeryc’s not risking that pass.”
Yvmur was right about that, but the rebel lords had overlooked what, in fact and to be fair, everyone in Eldidd but Ganedd of Cannobaen had overlooked: the king had ships in Cerrmor, a vast fleet of ships, enough to ferry him and an army of over fifteen hundred to Abernaudd. The rebels heard of the landing round noon on the morrow, when a hysterical rider on a foundering horse caught up with the rear guard as the rebel army marched east. Danry rode back with Yvmur and Leomyr to see what the shouting was about and found one of the men left behind on fort guard in Abernaudd.
“My lords, he’s invested the city. I got out just in time.”
“What?” Yvmur snapped. “Who?”
“The king. The Deverry king. Aeryc. With a fleet. They landed in the harbor at dawn yesterday. They’ve got the harbor, my lords, but the city’s holding firm. They haven’t even tried an assault. They’re just camping at the gates.”
Even as the men around him swore and wondered, Danry knew with an awful certainty why Aeryc was biding his time.
“Then we’ve got to ride back straightaway.” It was Mainoic, pushing his way through the knot of men around the messenger. “My city! He’ll burn it to the ground.”
“Naught of the sort,” Danry snarled. “That’s what he wants us to think and the worst thing we can do.”
“Hold your tongue, Tieryn Danry! I say we ride back straightaway.”
“Let Danry finish.” Much to everyone’s surprise—even his own, perhaps—Leomyr was the defender. “He knows war, my lord, in his heart and blood and bone.”
There was a moment’s silence; then Mainoic made a grudging nod and let Danry speak.
“He only wants us, my lords. He doesn’t want to harm one soul in that city and turn Abernaudd against him. He wants to break us and the rebellion, and then offer his ever so majestic pardons to everyone else in Eldidd, so there’ll never be a rebellion here again. If we go rushing back to Abernaudd, he’ll be waiting on ground of his choosing with well-rested men.”
The arguments broke out like a summer storm, thundering, violent, and over very fast.
“True enough, Falcon,” Mainoic said at last. “What shall we do, then? Find a good position and wait for him to come after us? Our men could starve before he decides to move.”
“I know that, Your Grace. I say we march for Aberwyn. Let Aeryc sit on his behind in ’Naudd and wait for us. By the time he moves, we’ll be entrenched in a walled town with fortifications that seal the harbor off from the countryside. We can send ships out for provisions if we need to, or use ships to get men in and out safely. Then we can try to rally the countryside.”
Everyone turned to look at Gatryc. He shrugged and turned both hands palm upward.
“Leomyr was right,” Aberwyn’s lord remarked. “The Falcon lives and breathes war. My lords, allow me to offer you the hospitality of my dun.”
There was laughter, but it was only a grim kind of mutter. Even so, as they dispersed to give orders and turn the line of march, there was still hope. The men and horses were fresh, and even if they rode by a long route to throw Aeryc off, Aberwyn was only some hundred miles away while the Deverry king was stuck holding Abernaudd. Unfortunately for the rebellion, Abernaudd, guarded only by some fifty aging or ill culls from the rebel army and a reluctant and whining citizen watch, surrendered that very afternoon.

When the town militia threw open the gates of Abernaudd, Aeryc suspected a trick, but a carefully chosen detachment occupied the city with no trouble. Leading the rest of the army, Aeryc rode through unmanned gates and down silent streets where the few townsfolk he saw were huddled behind upper windows. Finally, near the gwerbret’s dun, he saw one old woman standing openly on the street comer. As he started to pass by, she grabbed her rags of a skirt and dropped him a perfect curtsy. Aeryc threw up his hand and halted the march. While the army milled around and sorted itself out, he bowed gravely from the saddle to the wrinkled old crone.
“Good morrow. And what makes you curtsy to the king?”
“Simple manners, my liege. Whether or not everyone else in this cursed town’s forgotten their courtesy or not, and truly, so they must have, to shut a door in the face of a king. Always curtsy to a king, my mam told me, and so I do.”
“Indeed? And, what’s your name, pray tell?”
“Oh, they call me Daft Mab, and it’s true enough, my liege. Are you going to burn the place down? I do like a good fire, I do.”
“Well, you’ll have to watch your fires in a hearth, Mab. Tell anyone who asks you that the king says there’s mercy for all, as long as they took no hand in the actual plotting of the rebellion. I’ll put out a proclamation soon enough.”
“Then I’ll tell them first, my liege. You look like a good king, truly.” Daft Mab considered, her head tilted to one side, “Oh, that you do, and polite to your mother, no doubt.”
“I try my best to be. Good day, Mab.”
When Aeryc rode up to the dun, which stood on the highest of Abernaudd’s many hills, he found a squad of his men waiting at the gates. The place was deserted, they told him, stripped bare of every man, horse, and most of the food. Not even the servants were left behind, though they might be mingling with the townsfolk.
“I don’t care about the cursed servants,” Aeryc said, to the reporting captain, “Well and good, then. Mainoic’s wife must have gone elsewhere, which is fine with me. I can’t be bothered sorting out hostages at the moment.”
Aeryc turned his horse over to his page and went into the great hall with Gwenyn, the captain of his personal guard. Aeryc was honestly surprised at how small and shabby it was, not much better than the hall of a tieryn down in Deverry. The tapestries were old-fashioned, the furniture was worn, and there wasn’t room to seat more than two hundred men.
“Well, my liege,” Gwenyn remarked. “The only thing the false king is going to do in this dun is hang. It’s magnificent enough for that.”
One of the men did find a pair of fine maps, treasure enough since neither the king nor any of his captains had ever been in Eldidd before. Aeryc sat on the edge of the table of honor and spread them out himself. While he and his staff ate a hasty meal of cheese and bread, washed down with a forgotten barrel of Mainoic’s ale, they studied the long curve of the Eldidd coast, marked with all the villages and demesnes of the various noble lords. Far to the west stood Cannobaen, where his one loyal vassal was holed up like the badger of his device. Aeryc pointed to the spot with the tip of his dagger.
“One way or the other, we eventually want to sweep by the Maelwaedd’s dun,” Aeryc said. “I have every intention of rewarding him for his loyalty, so it’ll be best to let him join his men up with the army. Our spies say he has only ten or eleven riders, but it’s the honor of the thing that matters to a rustic lord like the Maelwaedd.”
“No doubt, my liege,” Gwenyn said. “Ye gods, there’s not a cursed lot out there on the western border, is there?”
“Forest and fog, or so I hear. I’m in no hurry to march to Cannobaen. There’s no real need. First we’ll wait here in the trap and see if our rebels take the bait.”
Just after sunset, however, a pair of scouts rode in with the news that the rebel army seemed to be swinging toward Aberwyn. Aeryc woke his staff and gave orders to have the men ready to march well before dawn.

Danry, of course, had sent out scouts of his own, and that night, when the rebel army halted, he made sure that guards ringed the camp round on a double watch as well. After a quick and futile conference with the demoralized king, Danry went back to his own fire and found his impatient son waiting up for him.
“Da, I don’t want to sit in Aberwyn all winter! Aren’t we going to get to fight?”
“Eventually. Once the countryside’s roused, and a relief army’s marching our way, we’ll sally from Aberwyn.”
Cunvelyn’s disappointment was almost comical.
“Waiting’s a part of war, lad. Whether you like it or not, you’re a real soldier already.”
At that point, the rebel army had forded the Aver Dilbrae some twenty miles upstream from Abernaudd and camped on its western banks. If they headed southwest on a reasonably direct line, they were only about forty-five miles from Aberwyn. Since even in good summer weather, twenty miles was a solid day’s march to an army of those days, and here in the short damp days of midwinter they were lucky to do twelve, Danry considered that they were safely out of the king’s reach. He quite simply had no way of knowing that the king’s crack cavalry, rigorously trained and drilled, riding the best horses with extra mounts at their disposal, backed by an elaborate supply system that was, ironically enough, one of Nevyn’s legacies to the kingship, could in emergencies cover twice that distance.
Yvmur himself unknowingly made the situation a bit worse on the morrow by insisting that the army swing a few miles out of its way in the direction of another holding, Dun Graebyr, to pick up the twenty men he’d left on fort guard. Since Aeryc would be marching after the main army, Yvmur reasoned, he wouldn’t be attacking the dun, and they might as well have the men and the fresh horses. Although Danry wanted to scream at the man that they had to make all possible speed, he was painfully aware that he was no cadvridoc, only a councillor of sorts, and very much on sufferance. So he held his tongue and let the army angle sharply west, heading for Dun Graebyr, instead of angling south, as Danry wanted, on the road to Aberwyn.
In the end, Yvmur’s twenty extra men made no difference, because Aeryc caught them on the road on the second day after the surrender of Abernaudd. Since the rebels had scouts riding out on the flanks, Danry wasn’t taken entirely by surprise. They had about an hour to find a good defensible position and arrange the army in it. A broad meadow eased into a low rise, just some twelve feet high, but enough to guard their backs, and on the top of the rise was a loose stand of scattered trees to protect the supply wagons and suchlike. And the king—Yvmur and the two gwerbrets agreed with Danry without one cross word or argument that the lad had better stay safely out of the way for this first, crucial battle. While they waited for Aeryc’s army, Danry collared Cunvelyn.
“Now listen, lad, it’s your first real scrap. You’re going to be one of the men protecting the king.”
“Hiding in the forest, you mean!”
Danry slapped him across the face, but he held his hand a bit, since he was only teaching manners.
“You do what I say.”
“I will, sir.”
“Good.” He allowed himself a smile. “Now come on, Bello, most men would be begging for a chance to ride next to the king. You’re being honored, you silly young cub, and trust me, there’ll be more than enough battles later on to satisfy you.”
Rubbing his face with one hand, Cunvelyn managed a smile at that. His father clapped him on the shoulder, then sent him on his way after the supply wagons and the rest of the king’s guard.
By the time Aeryc’s army came into sight, the sun was as high as it was going to get. When the plume of dust appeared, heading straight for them, horns blared up and down the waiting rebel line. In the clink and rustle of metal, men pulled javelins and readied shields. Danry arranged his men, with himself at their head, in the center of the lax crescent formed by the army. He offered one prayer to the gods for Cunvelyn’s safety; then the Deverry horns shrieked a challenge, and there was no time for prayer or thought. Aeryc’s army turned off the road, came free of a stand of trees, and paused about a quarter mile away to draw their javelins. There were about a thousand of them, Danry estimated, very fair odds indeed. Although his scouts had set the number higher, he put the discrepancy down to the fears and excitements of untried men. It was the only mistake he made in the whole campaign.
The Deverry army bunched into a loose wedge for the charge. The Eldidd line inched forward, gathering itself as the enemy walked their horses a few hesitant yards closer to get a little momentum. At last, when they were close enough for Danry to see the golden wyverns on their shields, their horns blew for the charge; the line surged; the wedge leapt forward and raced for the rebels. With a shout to his men, Danry flung his javelin and drew his sword on the smooth follow-through as the Deverry wedge flung up shields. A few men went down. Danry shrieked a battle cry and spurred his horse forward. Behind him his men plunged after, turning, as they’d been trained, to smash into the flank of the leading riders and scatter their force. Behind them the field exploded in shouting and the clash of weapons.
Danry faced off with one man, killed him, spun for another—then heard horns—a lot of horns—bellowing above the war cries and the shouting. The Deverry line ahead was wheeling back, almost as if to retreat. Riding hard, his captain, Odyl, fell in beside him.
“My lord! Look back!”
With Odyl there to guard his flank, Danry could turn his head for a look just as a plume of dust began to rise among the trees, and a new set of horns and shouts broke out. The rest of the Deverry army was battling up the other side of the rise. Doubtless they’d merely been trying to hit the rebel army from the rear, but all at once Danry realized that they were getting themselves a splendid prize indeed.
“The king!” he screamed. “Odyl!”
Screaming and cursing, they tried to turn their horses and rally the rest of their men to get them up the rise, but the Deverrians were all over them. Aeryc’s men fought well, cursed well; Danry had just time for that grudging thought before he found himself fighting for his life, mobbed by three of them. Odyl went down, stabbed in the back. Desperately Danry fought to stay mounted, parrying more than attacking, dodging his way free only to find himself in a new mob. His heart went cold as he realized that Aeryc’s men were deliberately going for the leaders, the noble-born and the captains, the better to crush the common-born. As silent as death itself he went on striking, slashing, dodging, working his horse back and back till at last they reached the rise. There what had been protection became a trap. He was so hard pressed that turning his horse and climbing the rise meant death. He could only fight on and hope for a chance to break out to the side.
The Eldidd horns started shrieking retreat. Everywhere Danry saw the gold wyvern coursing the field. Danry knocked one off his horse, killed another, drove forward, and by a stroke of sheer luck leapt past a pair of Deverry men so fast that they had no time to react. Just as he got through, he saw three Eldidd shields galloping to meet him, Leomyr and two of his men.
“Get out of here, man!” Leomyr screamed at him. “It’s lost!”
“My son! I’ve got to get to the trees!”
“There’s no hope of it. It aches my heart, but for god’s sake, ride! Here the bastards come!”
A squad of some twenty men were bearing straight for them. Only the thought that the king and Cunvelyn might by some miracle be alive and need him made Danry retreat, but he followed Leomyr as they galloped across the field and dashed for the safety of a distant woodland. Later Danry would realize that they’d been allowed to escape by men turned indifferent to their fate by some great victory; at the time he could only thank the gods that they made it out.
On the other side of the woods they found a scattered remnant of Eldidd riders. They herded them up like cattle and led them on, galloping until their horses could gallop no more, then letting the horses stumble to a walk. When Danry turned in the saddle and looked back, he saw no pursuit behind them. The only thing they could do was head for the nearest loyal dun and hope that the rest of the army would have the same idea. On the way, they gathered stragglers, until at last they brought sixty weary men to Lord Marddyr’s gates. In the ward they found a confusion of wounded, panting horses. Danry turned his contingent over to the frantic servants and led his men inside.
The hall was a sea of riders, sitting on the floor, lying in corners, nursing wounds or merely weeping from the defeat. Marddyr’s lady and her serving women rushed back and forth, tending the wounded. Up on the dais was a huddle of noble lords. When Danry and Leomyr joined them, Danry realized with a sinking heart that the king was not among them, nor Mainoic or Yvmur. There’s time yet, he thought, or maybe they went elsewhere. But Ladoic grabbed him by the arm and spit out the news.
“The king’s captured! Ah, ye gods, they took him prisoner like a common rider!”
Danry began to weep, shaking with the death of all his hopes and his honor, as the grim tale went on, and he wasn’t the only man in tears. One lord saw Mainoic fall, another saw Yvmur slain, a third had seen Cawaryn dragged out of his saddle. As they talked, a few other stragglers staggered into the great hall. At every new arrival, Danry looked up, praying it would be his son. It never was. As servants crept round, lighting candles and torches against the setting of the sun, the lords began arguing over what to do next. Every lord had left men behind on fort guard; if they could gather them, they could field a strength of close to four hundred. The question was how to go about it. Finally Gwerbret Gatryc, wounded though he was with a slashed right arm, rallied his strength enough to take command.
“We’ve got to get out of here, or we’ll be penned in a hopeless siege. Start kicking your men onto their horses. I know it’s bad, but we’ve got to ride west. We’ll have a better chance of hiding in wild country.”
The logic was irrefutable. While Danry was separating his men from the general mob, one of Yvmur s riders came up to him.
“My lord? I saw your son fall. He’s dead.”
Danry could only stare at him for a long, numb moment. The lad wasn’t much older than Cunvelyn himself.
“We’ll all be dead soon enough,” Danry said at last. “I’ll see him in the Otherlands.”
That night, about two hundred men out of the original thousand took the cold ride west. The horses were too weary to do much more than walk, and no one pushed them, because they had little hope of finding more if they foundered them. They rode until they could ride no more and made a camp of sorts in the wild forest around midnight. Around a sputtering campfire of damp twigs and sticks, the remnants of Eldidd nobility gathered and tried to plan.
“We’ve got to find shelter away from the coast,” Gatryc said. “We’ll stretch his cursed supply lines thin that way. He won’t dare follow us all the way into our territory. Let him take Aberwyn! We’ll take it back again.”
“True-spoken,” Ladoic put in. “And Danry here knows the wild forest around Cannobaen.”
Danry realized that everyone was turning to stare at him. In his numb grief he couldn’t understand why.
“So I do. And that’s our best hope, right enough.”
They all nodded. With a sigh, Gatryc cradled his bandaged arm and stared at the ground. While the others talked, Danry began thinking about his son, remembering the little lad who used to toddle to him with outstretched arms and lisp a few words. When someone caught his arm, he looked up dazed.
“Did you hear that?” Leomyr said to him.
“What? You’ll forgive me, my lords. Cunvelyn fell in that battle.”
There was a quick wince of sympathy from every man there. Leomyr let him go.
“We were wondering how soon the Deverrian will hang the king,” Leomyr said. “I’m wagering he won’t wait.”
“Oh, I agree with you, for what my opinion’s worth.”
“And the king has no heirs.” Gatryc’s voice was faint. “If we want to keep the throne in Eldidd, we’d best have a man to sit on it, hadn’t we?”
Like a hot dagger through wax the words cut through Danry’s exhaustion.
“It’s a noble thing to honor a friend,” Gatryc said. “But Pertyc Maelwaedd holds the future of Eldidd in his Badger’s claws. Do you think you can persuade him to the right way of thinking?”
When Danry hesitated, Gatryc gave him a thin smile.
“I doubt if you can,” the gwerbret went on. “Danry, believe me, it aches my heart to say what I have to say. But we have to have his lad. Adraegyn’s the king of Eldidd the moment Cawaryn dies. I’ve no doubt that the Deverrian knows it as well as we do. We’re sending a warband ahead of us, the men in the best shape on the best horses to go fetch him from his father’s dun. Leomyr will captain them, because that way he can stop at Dun Gwerbyn and pick up his fresh men and suchlike. The rest of us will follow and fight a rearguard action. Keep the Deverrian too busy to make a quick strike west. And you’re staying at my side. We need your battle wisdom. Besides, I have no desire to make you watch the events at Cannobaen.”
Although it was nicely said, Danry knew that he was being put under arrest.
“My thanks, Your Grace. Though he’s betrayed us, Pertyc was my friend once. I don’t want to see him die.”
This was just unexpected enough to put everyone off guard. As they stared at him, Danry summoned a bitter smile.
“Well, by the black ass of the Lord of Hell, what do you think? That I can see the death of all my hopes, of my king, and of my own son, and still love the traitor who brought this all down upon me?”
“I think I’ve misjudged you, my friend,” Gatryc said. “Well and good, then. Here, my lords, there’s nothing more to be said. Get what sleep you can.”
As he strode off, Danry was aware of Leomyr watching him, but he had no strength to worry about the man. It’s all lost anyway, Danry thought, all we can do is die with a little bit of honor. Around three campfires huddled the thirty-seven men he had left out of his warband of a hundred and twenty. Danry spoke a few words to them, then rolled himself up in his cloak. He fell asleep on the icy ground to dream of his son and Pertyc, the two things he loved most in the world, one already lost, the other doomed.
Danry woke long before the rest of the camp, when the moon was setting among the icy stars. He got up, moving stiffly, and looked round for the guard that he knew Gatryc had posted over him. In the dim light, he could see the young rider huddled on the ground and snoring. Danry crept past without waking the lad. In a clearing the horses were tethered; the guard there was asleep, too. Danry found his own chestnut gelding, still bridled, and led him away through the forest. Once they were clear of the camp, he set the horse’s bit and mounted bareback. He was going to have a long, hard ride to Cannobaen, but he was determined to warn Pertyc and die at his side. In his muddled state of mind, it all seemed perfectly just: he was leaving his men and horses with his allies to make up for this betrayal.
Since the horse was tired, Danry let it walk along the west-running road while he tried to think. He could lie his way across Eldidd, he supposed, claiming fresh horses and food from his erstwhile allies’ duns on the pretext of bringing them the terrible news. The road here ran through trees, which soon would thicken into a remnant of the wild forest. He would cut straight across country, he decided, to the dun of Lord Coryn, one of Mainoic’s vassals. Then he heard the sound behind him: men and horses, coming fast. He clung to his horse’s neck and kicked it as hard as he could, but the horse could only manage a jog. When he looked back he could see a squad gaining on him.
At first Danry thought it was Deverry men, closer than any of had expected, but as they approached, he recognized Leomyr in the moonlight. It was a pathetically ridiculous race of exhausted men on exhausted horses, trotting after one another with barely the strength to yell. Sick in his heart of the farce, Danry turned his horse and rode back to meet them. Leomyr’s smirk made him draw his sword. The six riders ringed him round, jostling uneasily for position in the dim light.
“I thought so,” Leomyr said. “You’re a good liar, Danry, but not quite good enough. You’re never reaching the Badger’s hole.”
Danry shouted and kicked his horse straight for him, but a rider intervened. With two quick cuts he killed the man, swung round him, got one good blow on someone else—he couldn’t see who—before he felt the fire, slicing open his back as the five remaining riders mobbed him from flank and rear. The pain came again, burning through his shoulder to the bone, then stabbing from the side. The dim night road was swimming and dancing around him, spinning, spinning, spinning as horses reared and men yelled. The trees were swooping and falling. Danry hit the road hard, tasting dust and blood as he choked. The road went dark. He saw a light burning in the dark, but it was a light that never shone on land or sea. In it he saw his lad, reaching out to him.

The news was such a shock that for a long while Pertyc felt as muddled and sick as someone suffering from a bad fever. He was lingering over his breakfast that morning, dreading the thought of archery practice in the rain, when Nevyn came striding into the hall. The old man pulled off his wet cloak and tossed it to Adraegyn.
“They’re coming, my lord. Leomyr and eighty men, but the rebellion is over, whether the idiots will admit it or not.”
When Pertyc tried to speak, no words came. Nevyn went on, rattling off the news: the king had marched, caught the rebels by surprise, and torn them to pieces. A few desperate men were left to regroup out in the forest and fight to the death.
“And this morning, King Aeryc hanged young Cawaryn,” Nevyn finished up. “Ye gods, this all took me completely off guard! I was only idly looking for news, and found a boiling kettle spilling soup into the fire. Here I thought we had another month before the king even arrived in Eldidd.”
“So did I,” Pertyc stammered out. “How close is Leomyr?”
“A day’s ride.”
Pertyc could only shake his head in bewilderment. Halaberiel, who’d apparently seen Nevyn’s arrival, came hurrying up to the table of honor.
“And what are we going to do about the women?” the banadar said. “It sounds like there’s not a dun in Eldidd where they’d be safe.”
Pertyc nodded, glancing around. Aderyn was standing in the doorway and watching Nevyn with his blank owlish stare.
“We can’t send them into the forest,” Nevyn said. “Well, I guess they’ll just have to stay here, and we’ll simply have to hold the siege until the king can lift it.”
Pertyc found his tongue at last.
“Easy to say, not so easy to do. If the archers hold them off, they’ll probably try to fire the dun. You know, ride as close as they can and sling torches over the wall. We’ve got mounds of firewood stacked all everywhere, you know, for the beacon.”
“I sometimes marvel at the gods.” Halaberiel was grinning to take the sting out of his words. “Here they gave you Round-ears heads that are as big as ours, but they forgot to put any brains in them. You’ve got two dweomermen on your side.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
Halaberiel rolled his eyes heavenward to beg the gods to bear witness to the aforementioned lack of brains.
“He means that if Leomyr tries to fire the dun,” Nevyn broke in. “It won’t burn.”
“Now here, are you telling me you can command the fire?”
Nevyn glanced around, pointed to a wisp of straw on the hearth, and snapped his fingers. The straw burst into flames. When he snapped his fingers again, it went quite stone-cold out. Pertyc felt like fainting dead away.
“I thought I’d shown you that trick. Now, my lord, I suggest we prepare for the siege.”
At last Pertyc rediscovered how to talk.
“One last question. Have you seen Danry in your scrying?”
“Well, I have, my lord. It aches my heart to tell you this, but Danry’s dead, and so is his elder son.”
Pertyc wept, tossing his head to scatter the tears away.
“Ah, ye gods, I knew it would happen when he chose this rotten road, but it hurts, my lord. Was it in battle?”
“For his son, it was. But Danry . . . well, Leomyr and six men murdered him on the road. I think that Danry was trying to get free and warn you the rebels were coming, but of course, I can’t know for certain.”
“It would be like him, to think of me.” He heard his voice shake and swallowed hard, then turned to face the great hall. “Men, listen! When the rebels start riding for the gates, Lord Leomyr of Dun Gwerbyn is mine. Do you hear me? No man is to send an arrow his way until I’ve had my chance at him. Now let’s get to work. We’ve got to warn the villagers and farmers, and we need to start distributing the arrows to our stations on the walls.”
The day passed in a confusion too frantic to leave Pertyc time to mourn, but late that evening he walked alone in the dark ward and thought of Danry. He would have given his right arm for a chance to kiss him farewell. His wife had always accused him of loving Danry as much as he loved her; it was true enough, he supposed, although he’d never loved Danry more, either, not that she’d believed him. Wrapped in the loss of both of them, he climbed up the hundred and fifty steps of the Cannobaen light, because the tower view could often soothe him. On the platform up top, the beacon keeper crouched beside the fire pit and fed split chunks of log into the leaping lames. At the far edge Halaberiel was leaning on the protective stone wall and surveying the dark swell of the ocean, spattered with silver drops of moonlight. Pertyc leaned next to him, and watched the waves sliding in, touched with ghostly foam, so far below.
“Well, Perro, looks like you’re ready for your uninvited guests.”
“As ready as ever I can be. There’s still time for you and your men to head home, you know.”
“There’s not enough time in a hundred years for that. I was thinking about your wedding, and . . . ”
“You know, Hal, I don’t really want to remember just how happy I was then.”
“Fair enough. We should probably be thinking about our enemies instead. Nevyn says they’re still a good bit away, camped by the road to the north.”
“Well, I take it the old man knows what he’s talking about.”
“He’s keeping a strict eye on them.” Halaberiel turned slightly, and in the leaping light from the beacon fire behind them Pertyc could see that he was close to laughing. “Nevyn says to me, ‘That bunch of bastards took me by surprise once, and I’ll be twice cursed if they do it again!’ The old man’s a marvel, isn’t he?”
“You could say that twice and only be half true.”
Long before dawn, Pertyc got his men up and positioned them by the glow of the Cannobaen light. The line of archers sat on the catwalks, hidden behind grain sacks stuffed with wet beach sand for want of a proper rampart. When he gave the signal, they would stand up, ready to attack, and hopefully surprise the enemy good and proper. Pertyc took the position directly over the gates, but although he kept his bow out of sight, he leaned on the wall as if he were waiting to parley. As they waited, no one spoke, not even the elves. Slowly to the east the sky lightened; slowly the beacon fire paled and died away. Up on the tower, the lightkeeper gave a shout.
“Dust on the road, my lord. It’s coming fast.”
In a moment or two, Pertyc heard horses trotting along, a lot of horses. Leomyr, insolently unhelmed, riding easy in his saddle, led his warband of eighty men off the coast road and toward the dun. When they stopped, some hundred yards away and just out of bowshot, Leomyr had the gall to wave, all friendly like, before he rode a little closer and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Open your gates. Don’t be a fool. Badger! This is your chance to be king of Eldidd.”
“Eldidd already has a king. His name’s Aeryc.”
With a shrug, Leomyr turned in his saddle and began shouting orders to his men. By chance, most like, they kept out of range as part of the war band peeled off and ringed the dun round while the rest bunched behind Leomyr on the path up to the gates. Toward the rear of the line, men dismounted and hurried to a pair ofpack mules. They brought down a ram—a rough-cut tree trunk tipped with iron, which Leomyr must have fetched from Dun Gwerbyn on his way. Obviously he’d never even considered that Pertyc would surrender. Eight men, dismounted but still in full armor, caught the handles of the ram and stood ready.
“One last chance,” Leomyr called to Pertyc. “Surrender?”
“You can shove that ram where you’ll enjoy it.”
Leomyr shrugged, settled his pot helm, then turned to wave his men forward. Slowly the line advanced, the armed riders escorting the ram with Leomyr off to one side shouting orders. The men moved cautiously, slowly, since they and Leomyr expected that at any moment the gates would burst open for a sally out. Pertyc smiled, judging distance. As the riders came closer, they drew their swords, but they kept looking up at the walls, as if they were puzzled.
“Pertyc, curse you,” Leomyr called out. “Won’t you even parley?”
“Here’s my parley.”
Pertyc raised his bow, aimed, and loosed, all in one smooth motion. The arrow sang as it flew, striking Leomyr in the shoulder. Pertyc grabbed another, nocked it, loosed again, and saw Leomyr reel in the saddle as the arrow bit through his mail and sank into his chest. With a shout the other archers rose, nocked, and loosed in a slippery whisper of arrows. Pertyc heard Halaberiel laugh aloud as his shot knocked another man clean off his mount.
“Try to spare the horses!” the banadar yelled in Deverrian, then howled out the same order in Elvish.
In the boiling panic that erupted out on the field, Leomyr tumbled over his horse’s neck to the ground. Horses screamed and reared; men shrieked and fell and rushed this way and that. The men carrying the ram threw it to the ground and raced for the road, but only two of them made it. Pertyc was only aware of the dance of it: loose, pull an arrow, nock and loose again, leaning effortlessly, picking a target, bracing himself as the last of the enemy warband charged the gates, simply because they could think of nothing else to do. As the wave swept forward, Pertyc had the satisfaction of seeing Leomyr’s body trampled by his own men. Halaberiel yelled in Elvish; his men swung round to aim directly into the charge. The arrows flew down; men and horses dropped and whinnied and swore and bled. Finally Pertyc could stand this slaughter of the helpless no longer. He lowered his bow and began screaming at the enemy.
“Retreat, you stupid bastards! You can’t win! Retreat!”
And simply because he was noble-born and they were hysterical, they followed his orders and wheeled round to flee. With shouts and curses Halaberiel called off the archers and let them go, flogging a last bit of speed out of their sweating horses as they galloped for the road. Swearing, Pertyc realized that it was over. Nothing moved on the field but wounded horses, struggling to rise, then falling back.
“Open the gates, lads!” Pertyc yelled out. “Let’s see what we can do for the poor bastards they’ve left behind.”
His men cheered, laughing, slapping each other on the back. Pertyc fought to keep from weeping. He’d never expected his idea to work so well, and as he looked at the carnage below him, he suddenly understood why Eldidd men had ignored the existence of longbows for so many hundreds of years. With one last convulsive sob, he slung his bow over his back and climbed down the ladder to the cheering of his men.
Pertyc set some of the men to carrying what few wounded there were into the dun, then ordered others to start burying the dead and putting badly wounded horses out of their misery. He himself found Leomyr’s mangled body and dragged it free of a tangle of dead animals. He laid Leomyr out flat, crossed his arms over his chest, then rose, staring down at the corpse.
“I hope you freeze in the hells tonight.”
He kicked Leomyr hard in the side of the head, then went back inside the dun. Adraegyn came running and grabbed his hand.
“Can I come out now? This isn’t fair, Da, shutting me up like one of the women!”
“Tell me somewhat, Draego. Do you want to be king of Eldidd?”
“I don’t. I’d only be a usurper, not a king. Isn’t that what you said, Da? You’re always right, you know. Oh, this is splendid. Glae said you killed them all. Did you truly?”
“Most. Come along. There’s a lesson my da taught me that it’s time to teach you.”
Pertyc led him to the area just beyond the gates where the warband was piling up the bodies of the dead. Pertyc held Adraegyn’s hand tight and dragged him over to the heaped and contorted corpses. When Adraegyn tried to twist free and run, Pertyc grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him round to face the sight. The lad burst out weeping.
“This is what glory means, Draego,” Pertyc said. “You’ve got to see it. Look at them.”
Adraegyn was sobbing so hard that he could barely stand. Pertyc picked him up in his arms, carried him over to Leomyr, then set the weeping lad down.
“Do you remember Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, Draego?” Pertyc said.
His face streaming with tears, Adraegyn nodded.
“I killed him,” Pertyc went on. “I stood on our wall and hit him twice and knocked him off his horse. You know why? Because he killed Danry. That’s what having a blood-sworn friend means, lad. Look at him. Someday you’ll be Lord Cannobaen, and you’ll have a friend you love the way I loved Danry.”
Slowly, a sniffle at a time, Adraegyn stopped crying.
“What happened to his face?” the boy whispered.
“The horses kicked his body a lot.”
Adraegyn turned away, pulled free of Pertyc’s hand, and began to vomit. When he was finished, Pertyc knelt down beside him, pulled a handful of grass, and wiped the lad’s mouth.
“Do you still think it’s splendid?”
Adraegyn shook his head in a mute no.
“Well and good, then. Once, when I was your age, your gran did to me what I just did to you. It’s part of what makes us Maelwaedds.”
Carrying shovels, servants trotted past. Adraegyn turned his face away from the sight.
“You can sleep in my bed with me tonight,” Pertyc said. “Doubtless you’ll have bad dreams. I did.”
That evening, Pertyc shut his gates again, posted guards, and called the rest of his men into the great hall. He ordered mead poured all round, then had the servants ceremoniously chop up the captured ram and feed it into the fire. The men cheered, calling out to him and laughing, pledging him with their goblets as the best captain they’d ever seen. Pertyc merely smiled and called back that they deserved all the glory. On the morrow he would make a grim speech, but for now he wanted them to taste their victory. The elves were another matter. Pertyc called them together out of the hearing of the rest of the men.
“You can leave tomorrow at dawn if you’d like, with as much booty as your horses can carry. There’s no need for you to see the defeat. The rest of the rebels are on their way here as fast as they can ride, or so Nevyn tells me, and they’ve picked up some reinforcements.”
“Well, Perro,” Halaberiel said. “That’s honorable of you and all, but we don’t ride into a race only to ride out again at the first taste of dust.”
“Are you certain? Look, you know enough about bowcraft to know that sixteen archers can’t repel an army of three hundred.”
“Not forever. But there’ll only be a hundred and fifty left by the time we’re done with them, if we have the least bit of luck.”
“Bound to have luck,” Calonderiel broke in. “The Wise One of the West is here, and so’s the Wise One of the East. Ye gods, if we’ve got so much evil luck coming our way that those two can’t turn it aside, then we’ll only fall off our horses on the journey home and break our necks.”

Late that night, once the wounded men were tended and asleep, Nevyn climbed up to the top of the tower. Since the beacon keeper was used to his eccentric ways by then, he merely said a pleasant “Good evening” and returned to chopping some of the continual firewood for the light. Nevyn sat down comfortably with his back to the guard wall and studied the fire, a splendid, large luxury for scrying. In a few minutes, a portion of the Cannobaen blaze turned into a tiny campfire, and round it paced Gatryc and Ladoic, talking in hushed voices. Nevyn focused his will and brought himself closer to the vision, until he could see Gatryc’s grayish face. Every time the gwerbret moved his arm, he winced and bit his lower lip. The wounds were infected, most like, Nevyn thought with a professional detachment. Nearby two of the men who’d ridden with Leomyr sat on the ground, slumped and exhausted. So the lords knew that Leomyr was dead and that if they wanted Adraegyn they’d have to come get him themselves.
Nevyn widened the vision until it seemed that he swooped over the countryside from a great height and found that the rebels were less than a day’s ride, perhaps twelve miles, away. What counted more was the king’s location. That search took a little longer, but eventually Nevyn spotted the royal army some fifty miles away, camped on the road just outside the western gate of Aberwyn. A flash of gloom cost him the vision. From what he understood of Halaberiel’s talk, their small squad of archers would be unable to turn back the newly augmented rebel army before they managed to ram open the gates. The rebels were warned, now, that archers with elven longbows held the walls, and they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come charging right in as Leomyr had. Well, if the king won’t arrive in time, Nevyn told himself, we’ll just have to slow the rebels up, then. The question is, how? He leaned back against the wall and considered the play of flames while he weighed possibilities.
All at once the wind gusted, and the lightkeeper swore and coughed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Cursed smoke!” he muttered.
Just in time Nevyn kept himself from laughing, because, of course, it wasn’t the poor man’s stinging eyes that were amusing him. He got up and bade the lightkeeper good night, wondering what the man would think if he knew his small misfortune might have just saved the entire dun. For this work, though, he would need privacy. He hunted up Aderyn, who took him to his chamber at the top of the broch.
“I’m not sure I can really pull this off,” Nevyn said after he’d explained his plan. “According to the Bardek scrolls that I’ve been studying, it’s theoretically possible, but theory’s one thing and practice another.”
“Well, if you can’t, we’ll try to think of somewhat else. Are you ready to go into trance? I’ve got the door barred.”
“I am, at that. If I start flopping around, hold me down, will you? I do that sometimes in deep trance.”
As soon as Nevyn assumed the body of light, he left the dun, hovered high above it for a moment to gather strength, then flew off to the rebel camp. By the time he reached it, most of the men were already asleep, but Gwerbret Gatryc was awake and sitting by his council fire with a handful of the noble-born and what few captains remained. What infuriated Nevyn was that they knew their cause was already lost. They were planning on making Aeryc pay high for his peace and naught more, just so they could die with what they called honor, no matter what the cost to the farmers and villagers of Eldidd.
After a few moments of rest, Nevyn floated close to the fire, which welled and purled with golden currents of pure etheric energy and thick blackish smoke, because the lords were burning damp and moldy wood culled from the forest floor. Nevyn prepared his mind in the way his theoretical scrolls recommended, called on the god-names they suggested for good measure, then slowly sucked up the energy, drew the fine particles of smoke to himself, and bound them round him by force of will. With one sharp thrust, he called on the Lords of Fire for aid. The smoke particles rushed and clung, caught in the stresses of his body of light the way iron filings arrange themselves around a lodestone. Gatryc yelped in terror and scrambled to his feet, his rotting arm dangling useless at his side. When the other lords all leapt up, too, cursing and staring, Nevyn could assume that yes, he was quite visible as a ghost-creature of smoke. Since he had no throat to speak with, he sent thoughts to their minds.
“Beware,” Nevyn intoned. “Beware! Beware, O impious men! The gods have lost patience with your cause. Beware, lest you feast with me tomorrow in the Otherlands.”
Nevyn could see their auras draw in sharply, a panic reaction as the fine forces rushed back to the body. In one convulsive step the pack of men fell back. Nevyn noticed that behind them, a couple of the riders had woken and sat up to stare.
“Who are you?” Gatryc stammered.
“I am the spirit of Aenycyr, last king of Eldidd. Be you mindful of my tragic tale?”
“We are.”
“For this little while, the Lord of Hell has allowed me to walk upon the earth, that I may warn you men who love Eldidd so greatly.” He hesitated, trying to remember more of the old saga that he was quoting. “Though your cause is just, your Wyrd is harsh. Not even the dead know when the time will come for Eldidd to rise again. Beware!”
The strain of keeping the smoke-built body was growing too great. Nevyn could feel his improvised form swirling and wavering over the fire. He decided that specifically warning them off Pertyc might be too blatant for an omen and allowed most of the form to drift back into smoke, but he did keep the face intact for a few moments longer.
“Even as I speak the Lord of Hell recalls me. Throw this folly aside, men of Eldidd, or on the morrow night you’ll dine with me in the Otherlands.”
As the last bit of smoke swirled away, Nevyn sent out an exhalation of pure panic. Just as the scrolls predicted, the men thought they heard an actual shriek, a grating, blood-freezing howl like a banshee’s, as he raced through the camp in his body of light, thrusting that thought into the minds of the sleeping riders as well as those of the lords. The men threw off their blankets, stumbled to their feet, cursing, swearing, asking each other what that ungodly wail might have been.
The Wildfolk heard it, too. Radiating distress, which the more sensitive of the men dimly felt as their own, they materialized into physical form but clustered round Nevyn’s body of light, which they of course could see, in an enormous pack. All at once, he got another inspired idea.
“See those men?” Nevyn thought to them. “They’re very bad men. They want to kill Aderyn and Halaberiel.”
If they could have screamed in rage, they would have as they swept off through the camp. They pinched and kicked and bit, hammering the men, grabbing the horses. In a yelling, neighing, swatting, kicking chaos, the camp erupted. At this point, Nevyn realized that he was dangerously exhausted. He rushed back along the silver cord to the dun and slipped into his body. As he woke to normal consciousness, he found that he was lying all in a heap in the curve of the wall. Panting for breath, Aderyn had his arms around him.
“By the gods!” Aderyn snarled. “If I’d known how strong you are in trance, I’d’ve got Maer up here to help hold you down.”
“You have my sincerely humble apologies. Are you all right?”
“You gave me a clip on the jaw, but otherwise I am. How did it go?”
“Taking the smoke into the etheric mold worked splendidly. Humph, I certainly wish I’d known this trick during the civil wars! As for the results, well, let’s take a look in the fire and see, shall we?”
But when they scried out the camp, they saw only trampled blankets, scattered gear, broken tether ropes, and Gwerbret Gatryc, sitting alone at the fire and cradling his inflamed arm while he stared into the face of despair. If it weren’t for the death he would have brought to the people of Eldidd, Nevyn might have found it in his heart to pity him.

In effect, the rebellion ended that night. Most of the common-born riders disappeared into the countryside, slinking back to their families and taking their old places on their father’s farm or in his shop to wait and see just how lenient Aeryc was going to be. To protect their families, the remaining rebel lords and their last few loyal men surrendered to Aeryc, who pardoned the riders and hanged the lords. Gatryc committed suicide, but his infected wounds would have killed him in a few days anyway. While Aeryc rode at a leisurely pace to Cannobaen, all Eldidd waited and trembled. With their fathers slain, boys were the only lords the province had, but everyone knew that Aeryc would attaint the rebel duns and redistribute them to loyal men from Pyrdon and Deverry itself.
Pertyc wasn’t in the least surprised when Halaberiel announced that he and his men would be leaving before the king arrived. There was no need, as the banadar remarked, to turn his highness’s whole view of the world upside down over a petty little rebellion like this.
“But I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming, my friend,” Pertyc said. “And it gladdens my heart that none of your men were killed over this.”
“Mine, too.” But Halaberiel spoke absently. “And I’ll be seeing the rivers of home soon enough.”
“You must be glad of it.”
“I suppose.”
Pertyc hesitated on the edge of comment.
“I’m growing old.” Halaberiel said it for him. “I think that somewhere deep in my heart I was hoping for a glorious death in battle, clean and sudden. And now it doesn’t seem likely, does it? I see naught but peace ahead for my last few years. Ah well, what the gods pour, men must swallow, eh?”
“Just so. I understand.”
“I thought you might. Well, if I see your wife, shall I give her any message from you?”
“That the children are well. That I wish she still loved me.”
“She never stopped loving you, Perro. She just couldn’t bear to live with you. It was the Round-ear ways, not you.”
“Oh.” Pertyc considered this revelation for a long moment. “Well, then, tell her that if she wants, she can come and take Beclya away with her. And as for me, say that I never stopped loving her, either.”

Surrounded by an honor guard of a mere four hundred men, King Aeryc arrived at Cannobaen on a day that threatened rain but never actually delivered it. Although Pertyc suspected that Nevyn had something to do with the accommodating weather, he never had the nerve to ask the old man. Even though the king had left most of the army back in Aberwyn, there still, of course, was no room inside Dun Cannobaen’s walls for those that he had brought; they made a camp in the meadow where the villagers grazed cattle in the summer while Aeryc, Gwenyn, and an escort of fifty rode on to meet Lord Pertyc at his gates. For the occasion Pertyc insisted that every member of his warband, all eleven of them, take a bath and put on clean clothes; he followed his own order, too, and went over protocol with Nevyn, who seemed to know an amazing amount about dealing with kings.
When Aeryc arrived, dismounting some feet away and striding up to the gates, Pertyc was ready. He and Adraegyn both bowed as low as they could manage; then they knelt, Pertyc on one knee, the boy on both.
“My liege, I’m honored beyond dreaming to welcome you to my humble dun.”
“It is small, isn’t it?” Aeryc looked around with a suppressed smile. “It won’t do. Lord Pertyc.”
“My apologies, then, from the bottom of my heart.”
“No apologies needed. But I suggest that we repair as soon as possible to your other dun.”
“My liege? I have no other dun.”
Indeed you do, Gwerbret Aberwyn.”
Pertyc looked up speechless to find the king grinning.
“Pertyc, my friend, thanks to this rebellion there are exactly two men left on the Council of Electors for southern Eldidd: you and me. If I nominate you to head the gwerbretrhyn, and you second the motion, well, then, who’s to say us nay?”
”My liege, my thanks, but I’m not worthy.”
“Horseshit. Rise, Aberwyn, and stand me to some of your mead. His highness is as thirsty as a salt herring.”
When, much later that day, Pertyc consulted with Nevyn, the old man told him that the king was invoking an ancient law. Any member of the Council of Electors who backed a rebellion against a lawful king did by holy charter forfeit his seat upon the council. Although Pertyc was frankly terrified by his sudden elevation, he knew in his heart that he’d regret it the rest of his life if he turned it down. Besides, he realized soon enough that as gwerbret he had considerable say in the disposition of the rebellion’s aftermath. Since the king was minded to mercy—he was farsighted enough to be more interested in preventing future rebellions than in punishing the current one—he granted many of the petitions to mercy Pertyc was minded to make. Not all, of course—the families of the rebel gwerbrets would be stripped of lands and title both, as would Yvmur’s clan and Cawaryn’s clans, by birth and marriage both. His young widow, barely a wife, was allowed to live, but only as a priestess, a virtual prisoner in her temple.
But Danry’s widow and his younger son stayed in possession of Cernmeton, as did Ladoic’s of Siddclog and so on among almost all the minor lords. Pertyc was finally able to repay Ganedd, too, when the young merchant came to him to beg mercy for his father. Dun Gwerbyn, however, was a different matter. When Aeryc wished to dispose it upon a loyal though land-poor clan of western Deverry, the Red Lion, Pertyc had not the slightest objection to make.
And such are the twists of the human mind that from then on, the Red Lion clan felt nothing but friendship toward the Maelwaedds, while the Bears of Cernmeton, worn down by gratitude, came to hate them.

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